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Category: Art and Sculpture

for gardeners interested in art. Sculpture to enhance the garden

British View of American Landscape

British View of American Landscape

Some time ago in the pre-Trump era the west lawn at the British Museum  showed plants from North Americas landscape. The plants were provided in partnership with Kew but the photographs were mine taken in September.
I now wish I had also visited to see and take pictures of earlier spring and summer flowers fro N America.

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Amongst the more colourful flowers were a range of ‘tickseed’ which is the American name for Coreopsis. I like to grow these airy prairie plants even in darkest Yorkshire and you may see why from these photos.

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Trust me to get a photo of mildew! Must try again.

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The Museum garden had a lot going on in both leaf and flower forms.
The signage was good but it wasn’t obvious to me which of three zones each plant portrayed; Woodland, Prairie or Wetland.
I am sure the wetland was represented by the wonderful insect eating Pitcher plants.
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Older Pitcher plants below.

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I am sure it wasn’t intentional on the part of Kew to include these British Rockies. I am sure the real thing are more awe inspiring.

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For me the September light set off these New England Asters a proper treat.

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Cone flowers Echinacea purpurea held there own!

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Orange Coneflower Rudbeckia fulgida. The seeds feed finches and Native Americans used a wash from the plant for snake bites, earache and for a variety of other medicinal purposes.
First known in England in 1789 when they were described by Wm Aiton the first curator at Kew and ‘His Majesty’s Gardener at
Kew and Richmond ‘.

 

Meadow Flowering Wild or semi-cultivated

Meadow Flowering Wild or semi-cultivated

One red poppy to add interest to this photo of a ‘sown’ wild garden. The effect is pleasing with the cornflowers just breaking into colour.

fritilliaria

A spring bulb meadow in a tree line glade.

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Blue bells and tulips make a good combination. The fritillaries are nearly over.

Sown seed in a field of meadow grass cultivated to help this floral display.

An unusual August Wild Flower Garden when most wild flowers are spring flowering.

Garden Seats to view Cyclamen

Garden Seats to view Cyclamen

The 18th century Union Jack Gardens at Wentworth Castle were originally called the ‘wilderness’. It was dense with shapes, texture and contrasts of shade and light. Now it may be a suitable place to take a seat in the garden and see the original Yew trees and the variegated ‘creamed’ Hollies.


Wentworth Castle starts with an invitation to take a seat while you admire the unusual grounds. The seats are unusual too!


The living plants are less unusual but in the stumpery there are shaped tree roots riven from the soil and replanted upside down. This fails to affect the well mulched cyclamen growing from what must be substantial corms.


Gardeners can be a hardy lot but you need a hard bottom for this type of seating.


More traditional cast iron seat. Why do we paint them and other garden items in Wedgewood Blue?


Cyclamen mulch is made from coarse wood and bark chippings

In the last year the renovated garden originally designed in 1707 was forced to close. The Yorkshire Post reports ‘Talks are underway to secure the future of the only Grade I-listed landscape in South Yorkshire, which is said to be “nationally significant” for its extensive monuments including some of the earliest follies in the country. In an irony which would not have been lost on its founder Thomas Wentworth, who only built the estate due to a bitter dispute over the inheritance of the family seat at Wentworth Woodhouse …’ Sadly there has been no progress and I have to rely on my old photographs.

Cottage Garden and Annuals Triptych

Cottage Garden and Annuals Triptych

This is a series of 3 photographs of my favourite cottage garden on Main Street Menston. Late summer each year will see me leaning over the Yorkshire stone wall to admire the ‘gaudy’ collection of flowers that create one enormous display.

Design Features

  • The hard landscape is suitably constrained and smacks of belonging to a true plantsman or plantswoman. The red brick from the family home and a small section of slatted paneling limits the borders of this front garden.
  • The garden barely needs to borrow from the surrounding landscape but the old grey Yorkshire stone walls add a timelessness to a short lived period of glory from the plants.
  • Like my garden this garden suffers from a drain cover in an inconvenient spot but it is as disguised as practical with the wooden hooped barrel used as a plant pot. (How else can they get more flowers on show?)
  • The central bed is designed as a lozenge rather than a more normal oval or circle. It works well and allows the gardener access from all 4 sides.

Flowers on Display

  • The main feature is not of structural plants or herbaceous perennials but the selection of  bright cheerful annuals.
  • Wispy Cosmos and Nicotiana edge over the roadside wall on which I lean to take these three photographs.
  • Good strong yellow flowers predominate and link the whole composition together. I particularly like the Tagetes, Marigolds and Rudbeckia .
  • It would be churlish to mention the grass which is in fair condition towards the end of summer.
Chelsea Blue

Chelsea Blue

I like a good strong blue in the garden and not because Chelsea FC play in a blue soccer strip. With the 2018 Chelsea flower show on the RHS calendar I have selected a few photographs to highlight my favourite colour.

Hydrangea Macrophylla

The faceless pansy can be a substitute for a viola it plays well as a center forward or in midfield.

In goal we must have the African with the furry edged petals in Violet

The B team Allium is just getting back into form after a long layoff. A mid season injury saw a 4 week metatarsal break disrupt his training.

Anemone and Ranunculus in defense occasionally charging down the wings

Large Scale Water Features

Large Scale Water Features

Moon pond water feature with pheasant – early spring at Studley Royal Ripon

Probably a bridge over a thousand years old at Fountains Abbey Nr Ripon. The Snowdrops set off another far older water feature with a bridge that was destroyed in the reformation in the 16th century. The snowdrops are probably related to the first known cultivation in 1597.

Posidon or ‘Neptune’ by Oliver Andrews standing in the middle of the Moon Pond after the restoration of the 18th century pond that had fallen into disrepair.

A Garden Jim but not as we know it

A Garden Jim but not as we know it

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Fiona Weir, has been supported by the Freedom board and was invited to take the creation – a traditional black cab festooned with hundreds of colourful bee-friendly plants to the fringe festival at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

I regularly fill the boot of my car with large bulky garden waste that would take more than 2 years to rot down. I have never tried using under the bonnet for extra space but console myself with rear seats that lay flat hatchback style. If I still had my chipper it may be a different story. I would still have my chipper it it didn’t clog or rust! Perhaps Santa can beam me up to an intergalactic compost heap that will do away with roots, weed seeds and compost undesirables.

Hull had a bee in it’s bonnet for the City of Culture 2017

The photo of the Black Cab garden by Adele an artist and designer who was helped by Fiona Weir. Fiona is a  landscape architect and bee specialist from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust work together ‘to plant temporary beelines and insect friendly gardens in the most unexpected scenarios’.

Other Garden Sculptures

 Memorial Garden Bradford City Fire Disaster 1985

Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow there’s Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow – not quite Klingon language.

Roylan

Floral Language

Floral Language

This curious 19th century craze which engaged the hearts and fancies of the Victorians had no historical or mythological basis but became the fertile sand on which a folklore was built. Using images from the Lindley Library this intriguing display tells the story of popular 19th century code used by lovers to exchange messages.The snowdrop signified friendship and forget-me-nots meant true love, but a gift of a pumpkin or a gourd was considered the height of bad manners – find out why … and discover much more by visiting the display at RHS Harlow Carr Library

‘The Artistic Language of Flowers’, 1880, published by Meissner & Buch, Leipzig © RHS Library Collections Digitised version from Amazon