Winter bonfire

click photo to enlarge
Many gardeners in England are obsessives, working all hours to maintain their garden to the highest of standards. When autumn borders are tidied before the onset of winter the dead and dying annuals and late flowering perennials are cut down and the resulting stems and dead heads composted or burned. Autumn garden bonfires are not unusual.

We, however, adopt a different strategy. We leave many of theses plants to over-winter so that their seed heads are available for the birds. Many shrubs, annuals and perennials, such as sedum or hydrangea, provide rich pickings for seed-eating birds and can look very attractive covered with a sprinkling of frost. This strategy means that though we enjoy the sight of foraging birds in winter, we have to dispose of the stems and heads at the end of winter as spring approaches. Much is composted but not all can be, so we have a bonfire or two.

Today's photograph shows my wife busy burning the woody materials that have been cut down. This winter has been very mild compared with what we usually experience. However, during the last week or two temperatures have dropped, skies have cleared and overnight frosts appeared.In those circumstances what can be better than wrapping up warm and feeding the fire?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Garden Bonfire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Gaillardia and cornflower

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One of the trees at the front of our house is a large, fairly old, crab apple. When we bought the house we looked at this tree and despaired at the treatment  (and lack of treatment) that it had received. As a youngster it appears to have been badly pruned causing a tangled knot of branches to erupt from the top of a relatively short trunk. It looks like neglect was the next course of treatment it suffered resulting in each of these branches shooting up and outwards like an exploding firework. But, the somewhat ugly-duckling appearance notwithstanding, the tree has promise. It is much used by birds, looks magnificent when it is in blossom, and produces a fine crop of crab apples in autumn that are much appreciated by the same birds. Consequently we instigated a programme of pruning to bring it to a better shape. We've raised the canopy a little each year, cut out some of the interlocking branches and restricted its spread. It is slowly improving.

However, it sits in the centre of a smallish flower bed which, from May onwards, the crab apple's spreading leaves make quite dark. Early flowers such as daffodils, tulips and even bluebells manage fine but perennials and annuals find the location more of a problem. Our recent solution is to treat it as a bed for left-overs, foundlings and self-seeded flowers. The resulting mix is a riot of leggy colour that a neighbour says brings a smile to her face every time she passes through our gate. I've photographed these flowers recently and found that my best shots come when I wait until the blooms are illuminated by the low, evening sun that gets below the tree's branches. This strong light produces bright colours, deep shadows and edging halos.

Today's main photographs show a small part of the planting and the main image showcases the complementary colours of the gaillardia and the cornflower. The observant will also notice some lemon yellow snapdragons and deep red poppies in there too. The smaller photograph is a contre jour shot of a section of the flowers showing the jumbled mixture of varieties and colours.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Front gardens, parking and poppies

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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

Mixed varieties of flowers

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Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, social critic, artist, etc

As a fully paid up member of ordinary humanity I agree with Ruskin's observation. The sight of flowers in full bloom has the ability to lift, if only for a moment or two, the clouds that shroud us, the worries that beset us, and the cares and concerns that are a necessary part of life itself. However, there are those who think that the cultivation of flowers is onerous and will have nothing to do with it. They worry about what to plant, where to plant, how to plant, how to feed, about pests and watering and a multitude of other imagined "difficulties". But, as anyone who has done any gardening will know, the life force in seeds and seedlings is strong, and they will often survive even the most inept of gardeners.

There is another lesson that I have learnt over the years that I want to share today. If you are the sort of gardener who wants to create something beautiful but without the need to acquire specialised knowledge or an inordinate amount of time working the soil, then ignore the latest varieties, the expensive hybrids, and instead make plentiful use of the tried and tested, especially the inexpensive "mixed" varieties of seeds. These are part of every seed merchant's range and give not only excellent value for money but also do the "artistic" bit of gardening for you. The fact is, one of the novice gardener's worries concerns which flowers to plant with which, and whether this colour "goes" with that. The mixed varieties of seeds combine flowers of a range of colours that work well together. So, if you buy mixed rudbeckia you'll get yellows, browns and oranges of various shades that will complement each other beautifully. If you plant mixed cosmos then the variety of reds, yellows and oranges (or pinks, purples and whites) will positively glow in combination. So too will mixed wallflowers, as today's photograph, I hope, shows. Beginners and some experienced gardeners avoid wallflowers because they are biennials - they flower the year after you sow them. Don't let this put you off - the result is worth it.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Unusual winter blooms

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The flowers in today's photograph are both common and unusual. How so? Well, they are Peruvian Lilies (Alstromeria) that are often found blooming in English gardens between June and November. When the firsts frosts arrive they usually fall over along with many other summer and autumn blooming plants that develop from rhizomes. However, these flowers were picked in mid-December, such has been the winter in my part of eastern England. What early frosts we have had have not been very hard, and consequently it is unusual to have these flowers from the garden on display in the house in early January.

We noticed another odd occurrence yesterday. Some of the white flowers known as spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) are coming into flower before our snowdrops (Galanthus); usually it happens the other way round. I'm told by the Meteorological Office that the weather so far this winter is "normal" and anyone thinking it is particularly mild has had their perceptions warped by the last two winters that were much colder than usual. Maybe, but that doesn't account for phenomena such as these that haven't, to my knowledge, happened in other "normal" winters.

I thought I'd record these late bloomers with the camera, and so I placed them in some filtered sunlight that was coming through a window and put a sheet of black vinyl behind them. The macro lens did the rest.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 100 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Copper coloured leaves

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Quite a few plants have so-called "copper" leaf variants. One of the most noticeable in the UK is the copper beech tree.Usually seen as a single specimen, sometimes in the form of a hedge, its shiny brown leaves catch the eye when it's planted next to ranks of green leaved trees and shrubs, and it can bring welcome contrast and interest to a scene. But not always.

Sometimes you see a situation where people have been bitten by the copper leaf bug, and every third tree has them. Then the effect is gloomy and grim: darkness replaces the lightness of sun-dappled and translucent green leaves. The worst example I know of being seduced by copper-leaved trees can be seen on the perimeter of a large rural garden some miles from me. The owner has alternated dark conifers with copper-leaved trees. In spring and summer when other trees look at their best this row looks very depressing.

The other common copper-leaved tree is the maple. These can look great in spring, summer and autumn because of the way the leaves change and produce interesting hues. However, my feelings about them are coloured by the fact that I lived in a house where the neighbours' garden had one close by the boundary fence between us and them. Only when all the other trees had shed their leaves and they'd been collected would this maple drop its own: and then only if the wind was blowing towards my garden!

Plenty of smaller plants have copper variants. I particularly like the dark brown heuchera. I have some of these in my garden, as I do an example of that other favourite, the copper/red-leaved berberis (Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea). This plant looks great when its yellow flowers are alongside the leaves and also when the red berries are showing. But, it's late autumn when the leaves change colour that it looks at its most radiant. Then the red/brown disappears to be replaced by yellows, pinks, purples and almost-blues. When seen against a background of blue-green leaved plants these colours look magnificent.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm (macro)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Men and sheds

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For a certain type of Englishman the garden shed is the centre of his universe, the place where the chaos of the world is brought under control. In the space circumscribed by its four walls he is the master of all he surveys: nothing enters or happens without his say-so. It used to be said that "an Englishman's home is his castle". That was never true because it was usually heavily influenced by a female hand. However, for the kind of man I'm talking about the shed really is his castle, a place of retreat and solitude, with a Chubb lock and a stout tongue and groove door in place of the drawbridge and portcullis.

Only in England, I think, could a book called Men and Sheds find a publisher and an enthusiastic readership. And only in England could it spawn sequels and imitators with the titles Shed Men, The Shed Book, and 101 Things To Do In A Shed! Woodworking, metalwork, model railways, DIY, astronomy, sports, TV watching, music making, collections of various sorts: it seems that men can use a shed for anything that takes their fancy. And, lest you think that sheds are solely the province of those of lesser means, you should know that writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas and Roald Dahl found their inspiration working in these humble structures; though in some instances they might have had the grander (but no more accurate) name of "summer house". A few days ago my newspaper carried an article about the "shed of the year". It had been nominated for the title by the website readersheds.co.uk (yes, such a site really exists!) and has a bed, a compost toilet, telescope, dart board and satellite TV: a veritable mansion in the world of sheds!

My photograph above prompted these thoughts, not because it is the archetypal man's shed, but because it looks like it's probably a member of that rare species, a woman's shed. Potting sheds, like the gardening that they support, are the province of both sexes, and this one has a clue that suggests it may be the domain of a woman. It's not the group of planted pots by the door that makes me think this, or even the vase of flowers next to them, so much as the words "Potting Shed". Each letter has been individually painted in bright colours with a few flowers dotted about for good measure, and the whole is on a white board that is fixed to the door. To my mind that is a female touch: a man's sign would have been either more utilitarian or more elaborate, and definitely not as pretty!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Victorian garden

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There's small wonder that when children go into a public playground one of the first things they head for is the see-saw ( that is if "health and safety" hasn't banned it.) It seems that the human psyche just loves to go first this way, then that. Yesterday lending was good: today it's bad. Bust inevitably follows boom, and the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

This see-sawing (or perhaps it's a swinging motion, and I chose the wrong piece of equipment for my metaphor) affects gardening just as much as international finance, the length of skirts, or the nutritional value, or otherwise, of the humble egg. England's great contribution to gardening - the landscape garden -was triumphant in the eighteenth century. Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers recast the gardens and parks of the well-to-do to look like the vision of "wild nature tamed" as seen in the paintings of Claude. Romantic ruins, serpentine paths, "eye-catcher" follies, asymmetric clumps of trees and shrubs all contributed to the look. However, by the 1830s people had become tired of this, and the pendulum (to introduce a third metaphor!) swung back to the very formality that the landscapists had sought to banish. The gardens of Italy during the Renaissance, with their rectangular, geometric forms, prominent fountains, statues, axial layouts, tall conifers contrasting with tidy, cut shrubs, were the inspiration for this new direction. That this recreation wouldn't have been recognised by either an ancient Roman or a later Italian was of no consequence: even parterres made a comeback, and newly imported exotica like the monkey puzzle tree were included in this heady mix.

Today's photographs show something of this style of garden at Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, in the month of February. The two views each show a part of the same area, the first illustrating the favoured axial symmetry, here lined up on the centre of the west facade, and the second the degree of "close control" that such gardens exhibit: not so much nature tamed, as nature caught, caged, muzzled and trimmed like a pampered poodle!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Eye See

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One of the pleasures of gardening is that you get to grips with nature. Growing plants for food and beauty is a marvellous pastime - but it's not for everybody. Only if you can come to terms with gardening's mixture of permanence and impermanence will it become a deeper obsession.

What do I mean by that? Well, in theory everything about a garden can be changed - the topography, trees, walls, ground cover - everything. But in practice there are are some things that you can't and don't change, or you change incrementally over a long period. The lie of your land is one such permanence, as are large trees, extensive walls, and big water features. But shrubs, flowers, vegetables and grass come and go with the seasons and according to the gardener's wishes. So too, by and large, does garden sculpture. In the average garden it tends to be small enough to move. But in larger gardens larger pieces are called for, and they become fairly permanent objects. That being so, you have to choose your sculptures carefully because if you decide you don't like them their removal requires a lot of work! Consequently, much large sculpture is fairly "safe", following traditional designs - classical figures, large urns, equestrian statues and the like. Large, challenging, or "odd" modern sculptures are much less common.

However, public or semi-public gardens like the 25 acres at Springfields Festival Gardens, Spalding, in Lincolnshire, can be bolder because they are enjoyed by streams of visitors rather than just an owner. Today's photograph shows part of The Sculpture Matrix designed by Chris Beardshaw. This uncompromisingly modernistic collection of big concrete rectangles, triangles and enclosures, painted purple and light blue, and pierced by horizontal and vertical slits, could only work in such a large area: it would overpower a smaller space. For me it's a sculpture that works in parts, but doesn't offer enough for its size. The detail I like best has this framed eye, inside an enclosure with shrubs, that can be glimpsed through the surrounding slits.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/17
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

One approach to gardening

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One of the most attractive approaches to gardening can be characterised as "benign neglect": taking a garden that has been laid out in a traditional way and doing enough with it to ensure that it doesn't become an impenetrable thicket, but not so much that the hand of the gardener can be detected. So, trees grow large, shrubs spread, climbers climb, perennials intermingle, and the only annuals to be seen are the self-seeded descendants of those sown under the previous, more organised regime. In spring and summer such a garden is verdant and vigorous, a place where the fit survive in the race for light and life. But in autumn and winter there is often an air of damp, death, decay and dishevelment!

This approach to gardening is not for everyone. If you like order, sharp tidiness, variety, and clear seasonal succession, then "benign neglect" is not for you. But if you have a taste for soft edges, natural planting, shades of green, and sitting in your garden pondering rather than dashing round it grafting, then it's worth considering. Of course you will need to make the occasional foray into the undergrowth, but with a scythe or loppers rather than a hoe or fork. Some tools, such as the rake, will do nothing but gather rust in this kind of garden. Plants that become overgrown will need to be either rescued or left to their fate, however that turns out. So, this is not gardening for the soft-hearted either!

The other day I passed this Victorian house in Boston, Lincolnshire. I don't know whether its owners practise the kind of gardening I've described, but it had that sort of feel when I peered over the ornate gate. The windows were losing the battle against Virginia Creeper and wisteria, and the lawn was long with dandelion blooms and seed heads adding their May time colours. Trees and shrubs were making pools of shade under their arching branches, and weeds were encroaching on the gravel path. In short it was a wild, but attractive, vista. And nothing at all like my garden!!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On