Pastel blues

One of the annual borders at Harlow Carr Gardens lent itself, I felt, to a soft pastel treatment.

Up close

It's rewarding to get up close and personal with some of the flowers in Harlow Carr Gardens. There's a wondrous variety of colour and form and some lovely juxtapositions too. 

Blue poppies are fairly rare and difficult to grow successfully. Harlow Carr have some beside the stream, though they were past their best when I visited. 

Lily ponds

Harlow Carr Gardens has two lily ponds: one a formal, symmetrical rectangle and the other a small pool surrounding by decking, where children can study the pond life. Both beautiful in different ways and both currently full of water lilies, though they were barely out on such a cold, grey day. They need a little sunshine before they will fully show their beauty. 

Containing my excitement

They do such a wonderful job of planting up containers at Harlow Carr - a masterclass in how to combine planting, and something I never manage to replicate. The secrets seem to be: go big, restrict the colour palette and use a variety of different leaves. Oh - and as any photographer knows, there is magic in threes... 

... though I have four photos I really can't choose between...  😬

A visit to Harlow Carr

Visitor attractions are gradually starting to reopen in the UK, mostly with booking systems and social distancing measures. It wasn't a hard decision for me to make my first proper trip out a visit to the RHS gardens at Harlow Carr. It is, after all, one of my favourite places and usually furnishes me with some reasonable photos. Of course, when you book ahead, you can't rely on the weather and it was disappointingly drizzly and cold. Never mind, the gardens are looking wonderful and it was worth making the journey. 

I don't recall seeing the stag sculpture before. I really liked it. On the other side of the path there were similar sculptures of a doe and a fawn but, without the dark background, they didn't show up well enough for a photo.  

The long borders are starting to fill out and the streamside is at its best right now, with huge candelabra primulas providing some colour.  

A moorhen chick had boldly strayed quite a long way from its parent.

There are some new beds full of 'annual' mixes - rather prettily colour-restricted: one predominantly blue and white; another blue, white and yellow; another yellow and purple - all very effective in such large drifts. 

There are attractive little 'set pieces' all around too; I liked the solid pot and the soft grasses together. 

Old stone steps leading up to a bench were hard to capture in a photo as it was a dark little corner, so I am quite pleased with this one after some careful processing. 

Embroidery

The brightly coloured dogwood stems in the winter borders at RHS Harlow Carr Gardens always uplift my spirits. I feel starved of colour in the winter. I think the shrubs make lovely abstracts - as, indeed, I suppose is the intended effect.


The colours were echoed in an exhibition in the library there. These were panels made by the Richmond and Leyburn Embroiderers' Guild. They had taken four seasonal photographs of the gardens and chopped them each into 48 squares. Members of the Guild had then interpreted each small square using embroidery and fabric collage. The resulting squares were then collected into wall hangings. The one pictured depicts 'Autumn'. In close-up, the work was exquisite, with a huge range of stitches and fabrics. Viewed from further back, the resemblance to the photographs was amazing.

I can't embroider for toffee... school needlework lessons sadly killed all my enthusiasm for such crafts. I can recognise good work when I see it though.

More macro practice

My mastery of macro photography is still very much 'a work in progress'. The depth of field is very narrow with a macro lens and, given that I can't really see the detail on the screen on the back of the camera, I'm finding getting the focus right is a very hit and miss affair. Still, practice makes perfect or so they say. Some of these approximated to what I was trying to achieve...

I'm awestruck by the beauty and variety of our flora, especially when viewed so close up. Many of these blooms were tiny, on alpine plants. It always amazes me how our world has so much to wonder at; so many different creatures and plants, so extravagantly formed, with such exquisite detail. We should treasure it more than we do.

The alpine succulent below reminded me of one of those Chinese dragons.

'And all of creation sing with me now; 

Fill up the heavens, let His glory resound.'

Glow again in close up

At the kitchen garden end of Harlow Carr Gardens, the illuminations were more 'staged', with flowers made of lights and fairy lights twined around the arches and fences. Still pretty, but with a different feel from the coloured floodlights in the rest of the garden. By this time, it was getting quite busy and I kept having to wait ages for people to pass. It was properly dark so I was using very long exposures with my tripod. People tended to amble along quite slowly so I kept getting 'ghosts' in the pics!

At one point the path was too narrow to use my tripod, so I tried some ICM (intentional camera movement) shots. I quite like the one below. 'ICM trees' are a bit of a cliché nowadays but the lighting gives a fresher feel to the image, I think.

This, below, is an ICM image too. When I was checking the histogram for the exposure in my processing software, it gave me deep blue 'warning lights' where the deepest shadow was. I like the contrast of the cool and warm tones so I took a screenshot, to make an abstract with a difference!  

Glow

I went, for the first time, to the annual winter illuminations at RHS Harlow Carr. This year it is entitled 'Glow' - and they certainly did. In past years, friends have told me it was a bit underwhelming so I never bothered to make the journey on a cold winter evening. But I was in the mood for an outing and the weather forecast was improving after daytime rain so I hopped in the car. I'm glad I went. Perhaps they've made it a bit bigger and grander this year... there was plenty to enjoy and the gardens, familiar by day, take on an other-worldly aspect with the lights.

Macro practice

I haven't found much time to practice with my 50mm macro lens yet, so I decided to take only that one to RHS Harlow Carr this time. It is interesting trying to take scenic shots like those I showed on Sunday. It works quite well but it's a challenge remembering that I've got to walk backwards and forwards rather than zoom the lens to get the framing I'm after. 

Close-ups are nice, with a lovely blur to the background, though I'm still not that good at getting the focus point exactly where I want it. It's all trial and error. I managed to find some wonderful colours though - and that is welcome as the nights draw in and the colour leaches out of the world. 

A mindful moment

An autumn leaf floating on the surface of the lily pond at Harlow Carr seemed to me rather beautiful; a moment of mindfulness, enjoying the shapes, colours and arrangement of forms in this little tableau.  (It's probably, as they say round here, 'a bit of a Marmite picture'. Marmite is that salty, yeasty spread which you either love, as I do, or hate!)

Seventy days of Sculpture

RHS Harlow Carr has a sculpture exhibition to celebrate the Garden's 70th birthday. Most of them left me cold, I have to say. I think I'm getting very picky in my old age! There were some rather heavy-handed chainsaw carvings, some resin things that looked like twisted veins and a few smaller pieces that, whilst not unpleasant, didn't seem very exciting. The one I liked best was the hen (above) standing on a garden fork handle, made by Mark Irwin from twisted wire. It had some character and would fit quite nicely into a domestic garden, I think. There were some representations, by David Watkinson, of leaves and seeds that were kinetic, gyrating in the breeze. They seemed quite fun and attractive, though I would imagine those bright metal 'leaves' might soon dull and spoil.

There was also a variety of leaves and plants, like foxgloves and ferns, made from metal by James Wilkinson, an artist blacksmith. They were cleverly done, though I would really rather have the plants themselves in my garden. Despite the fact I wasn't personally that keen on some of the exhibits, nevertheless I think it's a great idea for the RHS to showcase the work of artists and they do that very faithfully at Harlow Carr. There is always some kind of exhibition going on and they have a small art and craft gallery shop in the Old Bath House too.