Go Long or Go Wide? Variations on a Theme

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Mark Turner

As photographers, the lenses we choose can dramatically change the subject’s appearance in the finished photograph. I find that much of the time I fall back on my trusty 24-105mm zoom lens, which covers most of the subjects I photograph very well. But when I visited the patch of ‘Flore Pleno’ Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Flore Pleno’) in our woodland-edge garden yesterday evening I left “old trusty” in my bag and picked three different lenses as I explored this spring ephemeral. Continue reading →

Winter’s Green

Posted on February 3, 2020 by Mark Turner

Winter Forest — Mature Pacific Northwest Forest

We may joke about it a bit, but winter in Pacific Northwest forests is surprisingly green. Continue reading →

Look Twice

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Mark Turner

APLD_Spring2017_cover
As photographers we can easily fall into a rut of always seeing and photographing our world just one way. We find something that works and repeat. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, and done well it can be an important aspect of your style. But if you’re always photographing from eye level with a 50mm lens you’re missing out on alternative ways to tell visual stories.

The spring 2017 issue of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) magazine, The Designer, features examples of my photography that show alternate views of the same garden. The story was written by Katie Elzer-Peters, a garden writer colleague I’ve known for several years. Continue reading →

Drones and Beer

Posted on March, 2017 by Mark Turner

DJI Phantom 4

Getting up in the air to photograph a subject from above presents options you just can’t get from the ground. And since I like beer, I jumped at the opportunity last September to photograph hops and the hops harvest in the Yakima valley. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Candyflower

Posted on March, 2016 by Mark Turner

With the arrival of spring later this month come all sorts of early-blooming wildflowers. Candyflower is tasty as well as pretty. It’s also known as Siberian springbeauty and its scientific name is Claytonia sibirica. You’ll find it growing throughout the Pacific Northwest, except for the driest counties east of the Cascades. Look for it in damp deciduous woods or at the edge of conifer forests. It likes a little shade, but not too much.

Candyflower is closely related to miner’s lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, which can also be found throughout most of the northwest. Both of these species are delicious spring greens. I like them raw, straight from the plant, and they’re a tasty addition to an early spring salad. Miner’s lettuce got its name because it was one of the few fresh spring greens in miner’s diets during the gold rush era. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Wavyleaf Silktassel

Posted on January, 2016 by Mark Turner

In mid-summer you’d be forgiven for walking right past a wavyweaf silktassel (Garrya elliptica), thinking it’s just another large broadleaf evergreen shrub. In the middle of winter, when practically nothing else is blooming, you’d have trouble missing this west coast native with its long tassels of flowers waving gently in the breeze. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Douglas-fir

Posted on December, 2015 by Mark Turner

Oh Christmas Tree!

When you think “Christmas tree” you’re probably conjuring up a conifer. They’re those trees with (generally) evergreen needle-like leaves that bear their seeds in woody cones. Those cones are where the name conifer comes from.

Here in the Pacific Northwest conifers are the backdrop for most of our landscape, whether in the wild or the garden. In fact, if you throw a rock anywhere on the west side of the Cascades and hit a tree you’ve probably found a Douglas-fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii. It’s our most common conifer and is native from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. There are three varieties, but we’ll not bother with that detail today. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Piggyback Plant

Posted on October, 2015 by Mark Turner

Now that our autumn rain has arrived, the forest floor in our woodland has sprung back to life. It’s almost like a second spring even though the trees are beginning to shed their leaves. Underfoot, piggyback plant (Tolmiea menziesii) has greened back up and is busy producing little plantlets atop nearly every leaf. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Cascade Blueberry

Posted on August, 2015 by Mark Turner

Cascade Blueberry fruit nestled under fall foliage.

Every year we northwest lowlanders make pilgrimages to the mountains to savor Vaccinium deliciosum, Cascade blueberries (aka blueleaf huckleberry, Cascade bilberry, or Rainier blueberry). This low-growing and widespread blueberry lives up to its Latin name, for the fruit is truly delicious. When you find a patch loaded with fruit you can feast for a long time on sweet tastiness.

In this low-snow, warm-summer year the blueberries have ripened earlier than usual. Last weekend Natalie and I hiked out to Low Pass and High Pass, above Twin Lakes and just south of Mount Larrabee. In many places the trail is cut into a steep slope and we could graze on blueberries at waist level without even having to bend over. It can’t get much better than that! Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Scouler’s Willow

Posted on November, 2014 by Mark Turner

Scouler's Willows in fall color — Scouler’s Willows in fall color among Snowbrush

I spent a lot of time with our native willows while photographing for Trees & Shrubs of the Pacific Northwest, but never really thought about them as a spectacular part of our fall color palette. Maybe that’s because I was looking for them in flower and with fresh summer green leaves.

That changed when I drove across a Forest Service road on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest west of Lake Chelan, Washington last fall on the recommendation of a fellow nature photographer. Road 5090, the Shady Pass Road, connects Lake Chelan with the Entiat valley. It climbs to around 6,000 feet and we weren’t able to make it all the way across the pass because we ran into some early season snow compacted into ice on the road. Continue reading →

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Category Archives: Plants

Go Long or Go Wide? Variations on a Theme

Winter’s Green

Look Twice