Throwback Friday #141 ‘Albert Street Garden’ 2022

Taken at the height of summer in our garden in 2022, a blast of colour for these first few days of boring old February. What have we got here? Salvias, rudbeckias and heleniums mostly. Boom!

Throwback Friday #138 ‘Centaurea’

More old-school 35mm flower photographs from the early 2000s or thereabouts, celebrating the gorgeous blues, pinks and purples of centaureas, and here, served two ways: the first being an image of the field cornflower, Centaurea cyanus, and the second, Centaurea montana, or perennial cornflower. Both press my buttons and produce an impatience in my January bones for a lovely blast of heat.

Throwback Friday #137 ‘Cornus kousa’ 2007/8

A welcome reminder of what is to come as we trudge through January… As with many of these horticultural photographs, taken back in the day on 35mm, I have no record of the when or where of their original provenance. If pushed, I’d say these images of a flowering dogwood were likely taken at the arboretum at Mount Ephraim, Faversham in late Spring c. 2007/8. You can’t appreciate it from these close-up images, but when this tree does its thing, it’s smothered in these showy bracts, making for a demure, yet rather spectacular sight.

Throwback Friday #133 ‘Rhus typhina’

These photographs of the glorious foliage of a Staghorn sumac tree were taken in the garden belonging to my late grandmother at some point in the mid-2000s – can’t remember when exactly, though I remember actually taking the pictures themselves; walking down the flight of enclosed concrete steps that led down from Grandma’s first floor flat and out into the garden at the back, where this tree opened out from a small central bed like a festive umbrella.

Throwback Friday #128 ‘Physalis’

Really not sure from when or where these photographs date, but likely from mid-2000 or thereabouts. Who doesn’t love physalis, with those perfect paper lanterns and pop of orange. I was obviously drawn to taking these images on a day when the sun was lighting them very pleasingly.

Throwback Friday #127 Whitstable Pomegranate (2019)

It’s all true; a photograph taken back in the late Autumn of 2019, when the pomegranate tree in our garden flowered profusely and fruited too, and while the resulting ‘gemstones’ weren’t super-sweet, we did sprinkle them on a salad or two!

Throwback Friday #126 Houseplants (2021)

This photograph was taken just minutes before we opened our garden to the public as part of last year’s National Garden Scheme shindig; the view here is of our little patch of seating space outside the kitchen, not usually as packed out with plants as this, but not far off.