A week or so ago one of the garden magazine editors I work with regularly sent an e-mail saying she was looking for photos of gardens with flea market stuff in them for a story. A couple of days later she wrote again, saying they were going to do a whole special magazine on the subject. I searched my files and put together a preview gallery for Diane, and then got to work trying to find some new material.

The Birchwood Garden Club met last Wednesday night, and I asked whether anyone knew of gardens that might fit the bill. One lady, who I didn’t know well, mentioned her friend in La Conner and said she’d give her a call. Cutting to the chase, I visited Chris McCarthy’s garden on Friday afternoon and spent a couple of hours making some new images.

Chris was a little hesitant for me to shoot on Friday afternoon since I’d initially approached her to “just take a look.” But the light was nice, filtering through the trees, and she had some nice stuff in her garden. I also convinced her that I was good at cropping weeds out of the frame and that we could just pluck the dandelion seed heads that were in the way.

This hand rising out of a pot on the back porch, seemingly caressing the emerging foliage of some balloon flowers, was one of the first images I made while Chris weeded the next shot. Continue reading →

We’re about a week away from the official beginning of spring, but here in the northwest it’s felt like spring for several weeks now. We’ve had a warm winter so trees, shrubs, and other flowering plants are farther along than usual for this time of year. That’s a pleasant change from 2009 when it stayed cold and tulips were still blooming mid-May.

I went up to VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver yesterday and spent several hours meandering and photographing. Flowering cherries were just about at their peak. The video at the top of the post includes my favorites.

It was a partly cloudy day with some sun breaks and I shot with both my 70-200 and 24-105 lenses using only natural light. All of these were processed in Adobe Lightroom before importing into Animoto to make the video.

Last night as I was taking the compost out in the dark a wonderful sweet odor drifted around the corner toward the back door. The Winter Daphne, Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’, had to be the source as nothing else on the back side of our house has such a fragrance, especially at this time of year.

We’ve been watching the flower buds expand and turn pink for several weeks now, but just this week have the first precocious blossoms begun to open. We can enjoy the variegated foliage and light pink flowers from our kitchen window, enticing us to step outside and breathe deeply of the delightful floral aroma. It’s a good place to practice yoga breathing exercises.

Our early crocus, which I think are Crocus dalmaticus, aren’t nearly as fragrant as the Daphne, but they make up for it in sheer volume. We’ve had these very early blooming Crocus for years, and they’ve spread almost everywhere in the garden. I’m always digging up their little bulbs whenever I cultivate or transplant something, so they get dispersed from the tip of my shovel blade. They set copious quantities of seed, too.

These crocus started blooming for us more than a week ago but I just got around to photographing them today. More flowers are open on sunny days than under clouds like we have this afternoon, but even the closed buds provide a wash of color over otherwise brown beds. We’ve established them in a very narrow bed between our picket fence and the sidewalk. It’s no more than 6 inches deep and this time of year nearly filled with these diminutive purple flowers, almost like a little stream at the base of a cliff.

I wandered the garden this afternoon in a light rain with my pocket camera in hand, set to ISO 400 and ‘cloudy’ white balance because it was so overcast and dreary. I put it in close-up mode and steered the autofocus spot to where I wanted the blossom to be in focus. That’s a very handy feature and I think it does a better job than the old trick of focusing in the center and then reframing when working this close to the subject. There wasn’t much light so I was careful to brace the camera to reduce shake since I don’t have image stabilization in this camera. Check the corners for distracting junk, take a deep breath, and gently squeeze the shutter release. Repeat at will.

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle is one of the premier garden shows in the world. Every February thousands of gardeners descend on the Washington State Convention Center to find inspiration in the show gardens and purchase plants and other garden stuff from the rows of vendors.

The show is under new management this year, but walking around the exhibit area the feeling is the same as in previous years — a gardener’s delight. If I counted correctly there are 23 show gardens for 2010 and I think they’re all in the video.

Several show gardens used our northwest native Beach Strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis in vertical gardens. There were two gardens with chickens, including a unique “clucker clunker” pickup truck coop. Water, stone, and structural bare trees are always popular garden themes. New this year was a green roof, complete with a couple of solar panels with some spray foam insulation near San Diego added as well. Ever-playful Judith Jones of Fancy Fronds constructed a giant board game you could walk through.

If you’ve never been to the show, it runs through Sunday, February 7. Or plan ahead for 2011.

I’ve been going to the show for enough years that I run into lots of old friends and acquaintances. Of course part of that is the annual northwest Garden Writers Association gathering in the evening, which is always a good time with friends from throughout the region.

I saw lots of people photographing the show. It’s a challenging environment because the lighting is theatrical. That is, the gardens are in pools of light and the background is very dark. Overall light levels are pretty low as well. I shot the photos in the video with my Canon 5D set to ISO 1600 and white balance on tungsten. My lens was a 24-105 IS with the stabilizer turned on. I looked for something to brace the camera on whenever I could and frequently waited for people to get out of my frame. I prefer to work from a tripod, but in the show environment with thousands of people it’s just not possible. These shots aren’t for publication since the show hires a photographer and provides images to the press. Those photos are made in the middle of the night when there’s no one else around.