Autumn cyclamen

In the corners of gardens and in church yards are there are currently pockets of pink - the autumn cyclamen are in flower. They are often in the place where spring crocuses flowered and the cyclamen might be taken for a last "hurrah" of summer. But I prefer to see them as an early sign of autumn because they are usually accompanied by dead leaves that have fallen from the sheltering trees.

photos © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Pink cyclamen flowers

My wife's regime with our potted cyclamens usually results in them flowering in winter. This year due to changes in her management they are flowering in August and September. We have a few different coloured cyclamens, some subtle, others like the pink example above, are positively eye popping.

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

Bee on oregano flowers

We cultivate oregano for the attraction its flowers have for insect life: bees, moths and butterflies find it as attractive as buddleia and verbena (which we also grow). Photographing bees the other day I got this photograph. It's not the best I've ever taken, but I particularly liked the dreamy way the macro lens rendered the out of focus areas.

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

Horse chestnut flowers

The horse chestnut is not a native of the UK. It was introduced from Turkey in the late C16. Even today it is found more in parks and gardens than in woodlands or hedgerows. Its flowers appear in May and have been likened to candles - a tree in full flower is still sometimes called a candle tree even by someone who knows its more commonly used name. Each spear of flowers is bigger than a man's hand and they are usually well distributed across the tree, making a fine, if short-lived sight. The colours of the blooms, with pink, yellow and white often dominating, reminds me of the colourful, heaped up, cream, chocolate and fruit drinks offered by some coffee shops.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Primulas and colours

There are many colours that take their name from flowers, and those flowers are the reference point for the particular tint of that colour. Violet, lilac, mustard and saffron spring to mind. So too does primrose, the wild example being Primula vulgaris, a pale yellow flower that appears in the spring. Plant breeders have bred from the wild primrose to produce primulas of a vast range of colours. We were in a garden centre recently and I photographed theses examples on sale. As I took in the range of colours I noticed there was none exhibiting the colour of the wild variety and I reflected that, to my mind, its subtle yellow outshines all its derivatives.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Domestic 2

The material in this photograph is part of a panel of stitching on a duvet cover. I've always liked this feature since it looks quite different in daylight compared to its appearance in artificial light. It's the sort of embroidery that puts one in mind of medieval and early Renaissance needlework. Until you look closely that is, when you will then make out the back and forthmovement of a powered needle following and making the pattern of leaves and flowers.

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

Beautiful tiny gardens

This terrace with cottage-like fronts is on an urban street in Ledbury, Herefordshire. I've often walked by it and enjoyed how so much has been made of so little. The small canopy porches break up the essentially flat facades and give a focal point to the exterior of each dwelling. Rather than fill the space between the public pavement and the house with solid material - stone, concrete, gravel etc - a very modest garden strip, about two feet deep, has been created and the owners have used it for conifers, annuals, perennial, shrubs, climbing and rambling roses, and pots with plants. This has transformed the buildings and given them a pretty, homely, almost rural character that is a pleasure to behold.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Multicoloured church flowers

I've noted elsewhere in this blog that one of the best places to find interesting displays of flowers is in churches. Many hold specific flower festivals where contributors are encouraged to be creative, often having to construct an arrangement on a specific theme. Other displays can be linked to particular times of year such as Christmas, Easter or Harvest Festival. Many churches have a rota of displays in key parts of the building, often created and tended by a rota of arrangers, with colours and arrangements carefully constructed on a theme or using complementary colours. However, occasionally we come across individual displays that are simply a riot of colour, as is this example that we saw in the church of St Thomas, Monmouth.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Cyclamens, assorted colours

One of the attractions of the cyclamen is that it can be persuaded to flower indoors in the depths of winter, a time when many flowering plants are dormant. We have, for many years, had cyclamens that spend much of the winter on the window sills of an unheated conservatory, only bringing them into the house proper when the temperatures dip below freezing for any extended period. We currently have plants that have spent previous winters with us, and a few that were bought last year. They are a variety with smaller flowers and have been in full bloom for weeks, with more weeks to come.

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

Thomas Blake Memorial Garden, Ross on Wye

The Thomas Blake Memorial Garden in Ross on Wye stretches down the hillside from Wye Street to The Ropewalk. It is not a large garden, but a winding path with benches invite the visitor to stop and view the planting. Robert Blake was a prominent benefactor of the town. Among other things he was involved in the provision of running water, provided Reading Rooms and a Free Library, ensured The Prospect belonged to the town for all time and was President of the Ross and Archenfield Benefit Building Society. The garden is maintained by volunteers. When we passed recently we stopped to admire this area of dense planting that was full of flowers.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Japanese quince

Japanese quince (Chaenomeles japonica) is a flowering shrub that we have grown in a few of the gardens of the houses in which we have lived. It's the sort of plant that can look great or can look a straggly mess. Ours have tended to the latter. I particularly like Japanes quince that is grown against a wall and that's something we have never done. I've also noticed that the further south you travel in England the better the plant grows, particularly if it is planted in a location that is sheltered and sunny. A setting with these qualities also make it more likely to bear fruit and gives the grower the chance to make quince jelly. This plant is growing in Herefordshire as part of a hedge that receives plenty of light and is relatively sheltered. The number of flowers it is bearing this year is remarkable.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Cyclamen flowers

Over the winter months a few pots of cyclamens have brightened our conservatory. Though they look like delicate plants they actually thrive in lower temperatures. Now, with the days lengthening, the sun higher in the sky, and other colours coming into view in the garden, I set out to photograph the pink flowers against their multicoloured backdrop. A macro lens with a shallow depth of field achieved the somewhat "dreamy" image that I sought.

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

A basket of flowers

Walking along one of Ledbury's main shopping streets I was prompted to ask myself, "If you are a shop selling brassieres how do you advertise yourself to the passing public?" What prompted this odd query was a shop solely devoted to selling that particular undergarment that was using the device of a traditional bicycle with a wicker basket full of flowers. It was approaching the problem - as advertisers are often wont to do - by coming at it from an oblique angle. Time will tell if it works. I took a photograph of the basket of flowers and found that a strong vignette added considerably to the image.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Complementary colours

Gardeners who eschew subtlety, who desire impact, and want colours that look their strongest, plant with complementary colours in mind. Today's photograph is an example of this with the proximity of the yellow sunflowers and the purple verbena rigida seeming to deepen the colour of each and powerfully catching the eye.

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

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

Bee on pyracantha

Like many gardeners I have a love-hate relationship with pyracantha. I love its evergreen presence, snow-like covering of white flowers and plentiful orange berries that keep the birds happy. I hate its lethal, stiletto thorns. This year our pyracantha has been particularly well covered in flowers and each time we have walked past it has hummed with the sound of bees collecting the plant's pollen. This busy buzzer spent only a couple of seconds on each cluster of flowers. But, by chasing her around, I managed to get a couple of reasonably sharp shots.

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

Flowers and Cotswold stone

Pevsner describes Cecily Hill as "the grandest street in Cirencester." He is right, though my photograph doesn't show it. On my visit, the first to this broad thoroughfare, I was taken by the variety of shape and colour of the shrubs and flowers against the Cotswold stone of the Tontine Buildings, a twenty-three-bay terrace of 1802. The photograph shows that the absence of a garden at the front of your property is no impediment to a floral display, and if your neighbours are like-minded then everyone's work combines to great effect.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Hollyhocks, Monmouth

The hollyhocks are flowering in profusion in my part of the world. They are towering over everyone, imposing their large, bright blooms on us, inviting our acclamation. Hollyhocks are popular because they are easy to grow, reappear each year, and make a big, colourful impact. Of course, for many gardeners those qualities can be negatives, particularly where subtlety and a reasonable scale for a small garden are required. However, in a garden that looks after itself because the owners are too busy doing other things they have their place, as appears to be the case in front of this Georgian house in Monmouth, where the local newspaper is produced.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Euphorbia

Over the years I've had a love-hate relationship with the plant, Euphorbia. I like the shapes and colours that have been bred by plantsmen, I like its vigour, the fact that it thrives in semi-shade, and its tolerance of moist conditions. However, that vigour can turn to invasiveness and the plant can squeeze out other species. Moreover, it attracts the sort of pests that are not always welcome in a garden, and every variety has sap that is an irritant on the skin, so careful handling is required. There is definitely a place for some of the more striking varieties in a large garden. In a smaller garden the case isn't as strong. The variety shown above is Euphorbia griffithii "Fireglow": its name says it all.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Darwin's Barberry

It seems almost a matter of chance whether gardeners refer to plants by their English or Latin name. The subject of today's photograph has always been called, in my hearing, Berberis and not Barberry. It's a plant that originates from Chile and Patagonia and was named after Charles Darwin. Berberis darwinii offers the brightest of orange to the days of early spring, and its only drawback, I find, is the prickly leaves that have to be handled after pruning and which often prick you when weeding in its vicinity. It makes a fine subject against a blue sky.

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