Front gardens, parking and poppies

click photo to enlarge

In 2008 legislation was introduced in England requiring any homeowner who wants to lay hardstanding of more than five square metres in their front garden to apply for planning permission if they propose to use a material that is not permeable. The proliferation of cars has resulted in quite a few front gardens being converted into parking spaces. The impermeable surfaces used for this purpose have increased the amount of urban run-off from rain and is a contributory factor to increased flooding. The legislation seeks to ameliorate this effect by encouraging the use of porous surfaces such as gravel, block paving, etc, rather than concrete.

I'm all in favour of this: flooding in built-up areas is something to be avoided. However, I'm also against turning front gardens into parking deserts. I recognise that quite a few houses have little or no off-street parking and that such a facility is desirable for a vehicle owner. But, the greenery that a front garden offers to the householder and the rest of the neighbourhood is desirable too, not only for the beauty that it can bestow, but for the habitat that it offers to our wildlife. It saddens me to see front gardens lost to parking, but it makes me annoyed when I see gravel, paving, tarmac and concrete put down because the owner doesn't want the "effort" and "inconvenience" of looking after a front garden. There are just as many eyesore gardens created for this reason as there are for parking, and with less justification.

Creating a front garden that more or less looks after itself is relatively easy. An area closely planted with shrubs, small trees, perennials and self-seeding annuals (such as the California poppies above) requires only a few hours maintenance per year and rewards the gardener with all-year-round beauty as well as the approving glances of the neighbourhood. The amount of work required is, in fact, less than if the garden is a lawn, the surface that is often chosen by ignoramuses who want a "labour-saving" garden. Of course, if you set your mind against more interesting gardening and are happy to remain blissfully ignorant then this knowledge will have escaped you. But, with a little effort anyone can learn enough to plant, maintain and - yes - enjoy, an attractive and environmentally beneficial front garden. Even if it has a car parked alongside it.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A profusion of poppies

click photo to enlarge
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
John Berger (1926- ), English art critic, novelist, painter, poet

A saying in our family can sometimes be heard when we pass a house that is surrounded by nothing but lawns, with perhaps just the odd conifer to break the monotony. "All grass and no flowers" we say, re-working the title of Mike Harding's humorous, satirical play of 1980, "Fur Coat and No Knickers". We are not alone, I think, in seeing a flowerless garden as a missed opportunity, an aberration that makes one think about the state of mind of the owner. Does the person who lives there actively dislike flowers, I sometimes wonder, or do they think that grass gives them the least amount of gardening work? If it's the latter then they are wrong because there are plenty of shrubbery plantings that can be devised requiring less maintenance than the equivalent area of grass. If it's the former, then perhaps all that is implied in John Berger's thought, quoted above, comes into play. For it's surely the case that flowers are one of the finest natural beauties of the world. En masse or individually, cultivated or wild, they charm our eye, lift our spirits and inspire us. Painters have long known this, and some photographers too.

I came across Berger's words in a gardening book I was reading recently, and I thought of it again as I watched our poppies taking turns to come into flower. The assortment that we now have, a mix that has arisen accidentally rather than by design, ensures that bold points of colour are a key feature of June in our garden. From the big and blousy red and mauve oriental poppies to the delicate, yellow Welsh poppies or the bold orange and yellow California variety, poppies are a flower that make their presence felt. Subtlety and reserve are not the qualities that we associate with them. Even when the individual blooms last for only a day as do the paper-thin orange variety I posted a while ago, like a fanatical army hurled against the foe the poppies send wave after wave of replacements to take the place of the fallen.

Our California poppies self-seed in a border at the edge of an area of trees and shrubs. The leaf canopy above makes them incline towards the light, and I caught them as they were all turned in the same direction. I photographed the big orange oriental poppy, not because it's my favourite, though many prefer it over others. Rather, it was the contrast of the rather malign looking black/purple centre next to the bright petals: a pairing I have always found attractive at a distance but slightly disconcerting when up close. We have Welsh poppies a-plenty at the moment, but this group were growing in the shade in my neighbour's garden, and I quite liked them next to the mauve of the perennial wallflowers.

photograph and text © T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

RAW and the California poppy

click photo to enlarge
I shoot exclusively in ORF (Olympus Raw Format) for the advantages and quality that it offers me. It's the nearest that digital gets to the idea of the negative - the basic, unaltered exposure - and consequently, every image that I keep is in the form of a RAW file with, if I've processed a shot from it, the resulting JPEG. Some people see this as a disadvantage, but to this former film shooter it's not very different from storing negatives and prints.

Anyone who doesn't shoot RAW is probably unfamiliar with the benefits of the format. You can find this information anywhere on the internet, so I'll confine myself to saying that I value it for the unadulterated detail of the images, but, more importantly for the opportunity that it offers to produce a good image from a less than perfect exposure. For example, if you haven't set the white balance correctly, you can easily set it after exposure in RAW. Highlight and shadow recovery is much easier, and dynamic range is better too. There are other advantages too, but those listed are the ones I most value. The downside with RAW is that each camera manufacturer has their own proprietary format. That makes extra work for users of more than one system, and the problems it will throw up in 10, 20 or 50 years time don't bear thinking about. Some weak attempts have been made to standardize on Adobe's DNG (short for Digital NeGative) format, but without much success. I'll be happy when there is one RAW used by all cameras.

The other day I took some photographs of our California poppies, plants that we'd grown from seed last year, and which have survived the harsh winter to flower again this year. They are growing at the edge of a north-facing border with bushes behind them, and on an overcast morning I forgot to set the white balance manually. Consequently the green foliage came out a little on the blue side, though the orange of the petals was not too far off true. Viewing the image in my preferred RAW developer, I made adjustments to bring back the green of the leaves and stems. But, when I saw it I decided that I preferred the original version with the "wrong" colour! The bluish tinge seemed to complement the orange and yellow of the bloom much better.

So, there you have it, an unexpected advantage of shooting in RAW that you won't find listed on any website!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On