
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!

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!
Taken in the summer of 2014, a vigorous clump of bamboo at the back of the old French house.
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.
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.
I can’t date this photograph exactly, though it was taken at some point in the early 2000s, but I can tell you where I was when I took it: somewhere along the banks of the River Slea in Lincolnshire on a winter’s morning. Looking like one of those heraldic banners, I was obviously drawn to this surviving crisp of grass and snapped it using my old 35mm camera.
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.
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.
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!
A blast of improbable pink against an improbably blue Spring sky from back in 2013.