Sedum colours

Sedum are succulents commonly known as stonecrops. The wild, yellow flowered variety found growing wild in the UK is a plant that I became familiar with when growing up in the Yorkshire Dales. There it favoured old walls where it would thrive as it tenaciously gripped the surface and added colour to the dry, infertile conditions. In Lincolnshire I frequently saw it growing in the debris that gathered in the hollows of pantiles on the roofs of old agricultural buildings. The cultivated sedums in this photograph at Beth Chatto's garden near Colchester have been planted in pebbles by someone with an artist's eye and make a fine abstract composition.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10     2017

Dry garden plants

I've seen several dry gardens in recent years. The concept of growing plants that will flourish in dry weather isn't new, but the onset of global warming has given the idea greater currency. Often such gardens have a grey-green appearance due to the preponderance of shrubs and perennials with leaves of that colour, a characteristic of many drought-tolerant plants. Here, however, in Beth Chatto's Essex garden the blue cornflowers, brown grasses etc gave a wider range of colours that I found very attractive.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

A rowing boat as eye-catcher

A visit to the gardens of Beth Chatto, near Colchester in Essex, produced the photograph above. The pond is one of a series that have been created on a slope in the garden and it features this rowing boat. I imagine the boat is used with serious intent only occasionally. However, it supplies a semi-permanent focal point in this section of the garden as an eye-catcher. Most garden eye-catchers are on land; statues, pavilions,mock ruins, sun dials, etc are typically used. Where there is water it can be a boat house on the shore, a fountain or perhaps a building on an island. I've never seen a  boat used in this way before, but it works, not only for this section of garden, but also for a photograph.

 photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10