I enjoyed an afternoon coach trip with the local gardening club two days ago, when we visited The Garden House, nr.Yelverton in Devon. The acer glade was particularly stunning and I yesterday put some of the photos up on the internet as I have a Redbubble account, where greetings cards or prints can be bought of any of my photos, and I haven't been on that website for a very long time so I suppose garden photography rekindled my enthusiasm as I was pleased with some of the results.
The garden itself is small enough to see everything in about two hours yet large enough to get lost in and need a map. At this time of the year it is worth visiting to see the autumn colours and although many of the plants have finished for the season I would like to go back again in the spring and summer to take photos of different plants, colour schemes and groupings. They were due to close in a weeks time so will not be open for a while now.
It was interesting that I found myself being drawn to some of the stronger coloured plants, as in my own garden I tend to avoid these for some reason. They worked very well on a dull overcast day or against the grey stone walls, so I have some research to do to find out what some of these plants were called as not all of them were labelled. As I have some grey stone retaining walls in my own garden I now feel like adding some splashes of colour there, and the oranges and reds looked perfect against such a backdrop.
I don't have a camera with interchangeable lenses and my current camera is mainly suitable for landscapes, so I don't get those blurry backgrounds when doing close ups of flowers, but I prefer ideas for plant groupings or seeing plants from a bit further away as I can see their form and get a better idea of how they would look in my own garden. Although macro photography would be fun to get involved with, for the purposes of gardening I prefer to see plants from a few steps back and in context with the rest of the garden. One of the things that has often frustrated me when looking through gardening catalogues or websites was having every single plant photographed in extreme close up. I then have to search through google images to find the plant taken from more of a distance.
The following red flowers with black leaves worked very well in the garden (alongside the tall grasses), as did the orange flowers with yellow centres. If anyone knows the names of either of these it would be much appreciated if you would let me know in the comments box. I also never thought I would ever be interested in dahlias (below) but the deep red 'urchin' ones growing in the walled garden were certainly attention grabbing.
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| RED URCHIN DAHLIAS |
On the cooler end of the colour spectrum the lacecap hydrangeas are still on my wish list, as soon as I've had a bonfire to clear the space in the 'woodland garden' (the very back which has too many trees for the space) of the felled holly tree branches (see previous post). I liked the relaxed shady atmosphere of the rhododendron walk, so named on the map although only the hydrangeas were in bloom at the time.
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| HYDRANGEA WALK |
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| LACECAP HYDRANGEA |
The acers (or Japanese maples) were the main attraction in the garden, and I only photographed a few that were there. The view of the bridge shows various colours together.
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| ACER GLADE AT GARDEN HOUSE |
Now I am off to find some ferns and moss to photograph together for a photo challenge on Redbubble, assuming the ferns haven't all died off by now. Up on the moors last Sunday they were all brown and dead. I did buy a fern at The Garden House when I was there as I am collecting different varieties just like the Victorians used to do, so if I don't find any still thriving in the wild I'll just plant my new fern next to some moss in my garden.
For more info about The Garden House see http://www.thegardenhouse.org.uk
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