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Category: photos and garden photography

Some of our favourite plant and garden photographs not featuring in other gardeners tips. tips for your own garden photography.

Long and Short Gardens

Long and Short Gardens

Begonias look best in groups or where they are given the opportunity to demonstrate their colourful dexterity. (Most of my photos are produced uncropped but in this case I done some editing).

Honeysuckle tends to ramble upward and is not easy to do it justice with a photograph. Here are two attempts.

Long vistas benefit from repetition of planting. These dwarf rhododendrons and primula denticula make the point

Public Green Spaces in Britain’s Floral Resort

Public Green Spaces in Britain’s Floral Resort

As befits a town with the sobriquet ‘Britain’s Floral Resort’ Harrogate is again a picture of vibrant colour in most of its green public spaces. Despite the crown (hotel and garden bed above ) it can not be called Royal Harrogate nor can it usurp Britain’s Floral Resort for it’s exclusive use.

Blood red features strongly at the beginning of August in the Brexit era of 2019. Back in the day 2003/4 Harrogate won a gold medal in the Flowery Alliance of Europe horticultural competition  for excellence in horticultural display. I wonder if that was a bloodless coup?

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Looking for the Unusual

Looking for the Unusual

Visual nature can be found all around in your garden, local park or field. Keep a look out for interesting or unusual shapes, patterns and textures and take a camera around with you. I like the contorted Hazel branches that weave their own pattern.

This log in parkland had an amazing pattern created by the symmetry of the old bark. The teeth shapes remind me of cogs on a rustic wheel.

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Delphiniums Plural

Delphiniums Plural

Stately and statuesque, the blue Delphinium is one of the best tall features in a herbaceous border. I questioned my English teacher whether they should be called Delphinii as there always seemed to be several upright stalks like the chunky dark blue examples above. As regular readers will know spelling is not one of my greatest strengths.(nor is grammar).


The keen eyed will spot one of the secret ways of helping these 6 feet high giants stay upright. At Newby Hall garden a great deal of time and effort is expended on good quality staking and support and delphiniums are no exception. There is 3″ square mesh of fine filament placed at about 3′ high and the flower stems allowed to grom through. There is no need to support individual blooms.

There are many shades of blue from the dark almost purple to powder blue and even white.

Slightly gone over these flowers were displayed in a white border. Delphiniums have been a minor success in my flower vases this year and I will try again next year after feeding and water the plants extra sustinence.

Varieties courtesy of Old Farmers Almanac

  • Belladonna Group: Upright, loose and branching perennials with single flowers that grow 3 to 4 feet tall. ‘Blue Bees’ is a Belladonna producing clear blue flowers with white centers.
  • Elatum Group: These are the tallest spiked hybrids growing to 6 feet or more. ‘Blue Nile’ is a medium plant bearing semi-double, bright, and mid-blue flowers with white centers (called bees). ‘Bruce’ is a tall Elatum bearing semi-double, violet-purple flowers, paler towards the center, with brown bees.
  • Pacific Hybrids: Similar to Elatum Group, although not as tall, this hybrid is short-lived and often grown as annuals or biennials. ‘King Arthur’ bears plum flowers with white bees with 5- to 6-foot tall flower spikes.
  • According to the RHS Delphinium x ruysii  ‘Pink Sensation’ is a short-lived perennial with deeply divided leaves and slender spikes.
My Yorkshire Garden in April

My Yorkshire Garden in April

Favorite shrubbery view.

Scent of spring

I went around the whole garden photographing areas where I could plant bulbs for next spring

Area for growing on rubbish and Auricula

Corkscrew for wine bottles (not).

Plum blossom sadly frosted over a week later.

A Splash of Floral Yellow sans-narcissus

A Splash of Floral Yellow sans-narcissus

You may see a splash of yellow if the Fawn decides to take a spring dip in the pond. The skunk cabbages are reputed to stink but these Lysichiton americanus are also named swamp lanterns so they flower well near the boggy pond.

The Erythronium bear long, strong stems producing canary yellow flowers that compete with late daffodils and the pink azalea.

Magnolia hybrids  can have spectacular yellow flowers in the familiar magnolia cup shape. Aptly named variety ‘Yellow Bird’ looks like it says on the tin.

‘Hotei’ is a famous yellow Rhododendron that I aspire to grow successfully in my Yorkshire garden – space and chance would be a fine thing.