Tag: photography

A Happy New Year to You

Ann Mackay30 Comments
Frosted blackberry leaves

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It’s time to say goodbye to 2022 and welcome in 2023. I hope that this coming year is a good year for you and treats you kindly. If you celebrate today, I hope you have fun!

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions but I do look back at what I’ve done over the previous year and make a few small plans for the future. One of the main areas that I plan for is, of course, my garden. The biggest step forward with it in 2022 was the completion of the pond, which delighted me by bringing more wildlife into the garden.

In 2023 I have more work to do in the area around the pond to create a bog garden. I also have plans to create more small wildlife areas and perhaps a bit of space for growing veggies for ourselves. It’s very unlikely that I’ll manage to do all the things I want to, but it feels good to have an idea of where it’s all heading. (I might even take time away from the garden to do a bit of printmaking… 🙂 )

Whatever your hopes and plans for 2023 are, I wish you a very Happy New Year. May it bring you health and happiness and peace!

Wishing You a Happy Christmas

Ann Mackay19 Comments

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Christmas already! It feels as if it has sneaked up on me very quickly again this year. As usual, I’ve been on the lookout for a photograph of a suitably frosty ‘decoration’ from the garden for this post.

Luckily, our recent frost and snow, which lasted for several days, was a great opportunity to spend time in the garden with my camera. There are always some seed heads left in the garden and these look good when they’re heavily coated with frost. The seed head you see here is on a bronze fennel. It’s the same plant that I used for the photo of a seed head with water drops (from melted frost) in this post. (The photographs in that post were taken in a previous winter.)

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a time of happiness, and a time to get together with the people you love. I hope that it will be a chance to enjoy being with family and friends. Merry Christmas everyone! 🙂

It’s Cold Out There!

Ann Mackay27 Comments
Frosted Salvia (flowering sage)

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We are definitely in the cold, dark depths of winter here, brrr! I think the drawn-out and very mild autumn had lulled me into a false sense of security and/or warmth because the freezing temperatures feel like quite a shock. But grey clouds are said to have silver linings, and frosty mornings mean opportunities for photography.

I initially wrote that frosty mornings have a sparkle, but that’s not necessarily true. If there is sun, as in the top picture of a pink-flowered salvia, it makes the image much more appealing. The tiny flowers are just enough to give a translucent gleam of crimson.

Frosted Astrantia flowers
Astrantia flowers are usually long gone by winter.

The two following images, were, by contrast, in deep shade. They have a much colder and more subtle feel, lacking the drama of strong colour and sun. At the same time, there is more detail in the frost than if the flower was beginning to warm in the weak sunshine. (Any bit of sun soon softens and melts the frost, so in brighter areas I have to work much more quickly.)

Astrantia (above) wouldn’t normally be in flower at this time of year and this late flower was a surprise. The Japanese anemone (below) would normally have finished flowering some time ago too (usually October). Maybe the late flowers were a result of the warmer than normal autumn. In any case, they were a chance to take frosty flower photographs that I wouldn’t normally get.

Frosted Anemone
This anemone flowered very late and paid a very chilly price!

Sadly, the frozen flowers will be destroyed by the frost. They’ll be like limp brown rags when they eventually thaw. I can’t complain though, because in these cooler, shady areas, the frost has lasted several days without lifting, giving me plenty of time to photograph these flowers.

The winter-flowering clematis that I posted photographs of recently has frozen too. Although I would expect the opened flowers to be badly damaged by the frost, I hope that the still-unopened buds will survive. With luck and milder temperatures soon, there may be more of these pink bells to come. I certainly hope so!

Frosted clematis flowers
The winter-flowering clematis is now a frozen clematis!

Winter Scent: Viburnum Bodnantense ‘Dawn’

Ann Mackay20 Comments
Snow on flowers of Viburnum bodnantense Dawn

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Last week I photographed a winter-flowering clematis growing up a shrub that flowers at the same time. This week I thought I’d show you what the flowers of that shrub (Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’) look like.

As you can see, the flowers are small and not exactly spectacular. They do however, look very pretty on the bare branches of the shrub and provide some good colour on a winter’s day. After frost or snow some of the older flowers will be browned and dying, but the newly-opened flowers and buds keep going and can last over a long period.

One of the main reasons I planted this viburnum wasn’t for the flowers, but for the scent. I’d come across it in a park in winter and had been entranced by its sweet fragrance. For the first years with my own one, I’d been disappointed by an apparent lack of scent. (But I don’t have a particularly strong sense of smell, so I thought I could be at fault.) I wondered whether individual shrubs could vary in the amount of scent they produced.

This year I was very pleased to find that my viburnum does indeed produce scent. At the moment it has far more flowers than ever before, so their sweetness has been noticeable in the air. Getting up close to the viburnum while I photographed the clematis in its branches was a very pleasant experience. There are some delightful benefits to spending time in a cold winter garden!

Winter Clematis: Lansdowne Gem

Ann Mackay22 Comments
Clematis cirrhosa 'Lansdowne Gem'

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The weather has made the garden feel distinctly unappealing for most of this week. It has been grey and damp and dark far too early in the day for me to spend much time outside. But I did make a point of going out to look at the flowers of Clematis cirrhosa ‘Lansdowne Gem’.

Unlike the other clematis in the garden, this one flowers during winter. The flowers are a deep wine-red, but in order to see the colour you need to be standing underneath the bell-like flowers. (The outside of the flower is a drab greyish-white.) I’ve chosen to grow this clematis up through the winter-flowering Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ which has pink flowers at the same time.

The flowers are not all a solid red. Some are quite speckled, especially around the edges of the petals. I was intrigued to notice that one flower was especially spotty (below), making it look very like the flowers of the related variety ‘Freckles’. And seeing how pretty it is, I’m now tempted to look for somewhere that I could grow ‘Freckles’ too.

Having flowers in the garden in winter is something of a treat. It’s also great for any bees that are around at this time. That makes me very interested in growing other winter-flowering clematis.

These clematis come from Mediterranean areas and go dormant in summer. That means they are more likely to survive drought in my hot Suffolk garden than the summer-flowering types. (I’ve lost a few of those through planting them in unsuitably dry places!) These clematis are not so hardy, though, so I’m hoping we won’t get a ‘Beast from the East’ this year.

Clematis cirrhosa 'Lansdowne Gem'

LEFT: The clematis flowers trail through this shrub’s branches like rows of bells.

RIGHT: One of the flowers of ‘Landsdowne Gem’ was spotty rather than the usual almost solid red.

Going to Seed!

Ann Mackay14 Comments
Fennel flower head with water drops

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Although the phrase ‘going to seed’ suggests going into a decline, I’m usually happy to see seed heads in the garden. (Not all, mind you – weeds may not be so welcome!) For a garden photographer they are another opportunity to create an image. That’s especially welcome at a time of year when there are fewer flowers and plants to photograph.

Seed heads are, of course, very valuable for wildlife too. The seeds are a good source of food for birds in winter and, before that stage, the flowers are a great source of pollen for insects.

The seed heads here are bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’). In the top picture, there are still many of the tiny yellow flowers but you can also see the brownish/orange ridged shapes of the newly-formed seeds. I was attracted to it by the neat drops of melted frost encasing them. (This was a young plant that had flowered very late and got caught by the first of the frosts last year.)

In winter, the seed heads of fennel provide a very graceful shape for frost to decorate. The frost in the second photo was especially hard and covered the whole garden with its delicate filigree. The air was so cold that the frost had time to glitter in the sun for a little while before it melted. We haven’t had any frost yet this year, but I’ll be checking the fennel plants when it arrives! Hopefully it will last long enough for me to take some more sparkly photographs.

Frosted fennel seed head
Frost makes this fennel seed head glisten.

Autumn Days

Ann Mackay15 Comments
Crab apples

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Autumn brings a restrained feel to my garden. There is nothing showy here at the moment and the remaining touches of colour are easy to miss. But if the sun shines, there might be a sudden brief glow as it brings the leaves alive like small flames.

Mostly this is a time of rain (needed after the summer’s drought) and winds that tear the remaining leaves from the trees. Not so nice for gardening, until a dry and mild day comes along. Then I can get some digging done in the loosened soil. (It gets so dried out in summer that digging then is very hard work. Adding more compost will help, but it will take a lot to make a difference.)

As the autumn colours begin to fade or get blown away, new winter colour is starting to arrive. Bright yellow flowers are ready to open on both a mahonia and winter jasmine. Near the jasmine, a viburnum bush has the dark red bells of a winter-flowering clematis to accompany its own pink buds. And, at last, I can see buds of hesperantha (see this post) which should open soon. So I will still have one or two things to photograph while the winter draws closer.

Autumn leaves and berries

The Golden Touch of Autumn

Ann Mackay16 Comments
Autumn smoke bush leaves

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Often the leaves don’t change colour very much here in autumn. This year though, they were much more golden than usual.

Our autumns are usually mild, with rain and stiff breezes that carry away a lot of the leaves. This October, however, was much warmer and sunnier than usual during the day and the clear skies allowed the temperature to drop a lot at night. The result has been good displays of golden leaves in gardens and the countryside around us. (Happy timing for us, because a good friend had come to stay, so we were keen to show off the beauties of Suffolk.)

The leaves above belong to our smoke bush (Cotinus), which is the most reliable producer of autumn colour in the garden. It also provides me with leaves that are low enough down for me to be able to photograph them close up. A large Himalayan birch and a rowan tree have both coloured well, as has a wisteria. There are not many red leaves though. A cherry tree and a crab apple both produce some red but the leaves have already blown off. (And had to be fished out of the pond! Luckily that’s a job I find quite satisfying.)

Waiting in Hope

Ann Mackay11 Comments
Hesperantha flowers

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Will I see a flower or two on my hesperanthas before winter comes? I must admit that it’s just a small hope by now, because I haven’t even noticed any buds. (But I’ve been busy elsewhere in the garden so I could have missed those.)

Hesperanthas flower a bit later in my garden than they’re said to – often October into November here. So if they flower they add a splash of colour before the frosts. Last year I had lots of red in a border and this white one in a pot. Nothing this year.

This year has been so extremely hot and dry that I think these plants have really suffered. I did try to keep them watered, but with so many plants gasping for more moisture, it was hard to keep up. These plants like moist or damp soils, so I may try relocating them to the bog garden that I’m building near the pond. Winter may be a problem there though. We do get long rainy spells at that time of year and I worry that the ‘bog’ area may get too waterlogged. I guess I will just have to try it and see. If it works, I may get some flowers like these next year… 🙂

Autumn Elegance

Ann Mackay7 Comments
Japanese anemone 'Honorine Jobert'

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This white Japanese anemone (‘Honorine Jobert’) has just finished flowering in the last week. I’m impressed that the flowers have lasted so well, despite it getting very little extra watering in summer.

Many of the other plants in the garden appeared to finish flowering earlier than usual due to the stress of the hotter than usual weather and lack of rainfall. (Some plants, like the red echinacea have loved the sunshine and produced masses of flowers.)

The pink Japanese anemones here (‘Hadspen Abundance’ and ‘September Charm’, which always flowers much earlier than September) have struggled this year. Both have produced far fewer flowers than usual and much less leaf growth too. Perhaps drought and heat will help to keep these thuggish plants in check in future!

It’s a relief to see that this anemone hasn’t spread as much as the pink ones. So far it hasn’t caused any problems by crowding the plants around it. (But it has only been in the ground for around three years. Maybe it will start a takeover bid when it has had more time to get thoroughly established. I will have to wait and see.) Originally I had thought of keeping this plant and a second one in pots to limit their spread but eventually decided that they would be better off in the ground.

Japanese anemones may be inclined to swamp their neighbours, but so far ‘Honorine Jobert’ has been much better behaved than her pink cousins. Even if that does happen, I will have to forgive the plant because the white flowers with their touch of glowing yellow are delightful, especially when the other flowers are fading away.