Springtime And The Garden Blooms ...

Well almost, but with the excellent spring weather we are finally seeing there is some movement on the flowering front in my garden. Daffodils and primula are in evidence but many others especially the early flowering shrubs are in bud and willl be flowering very soon. A couple of early risers in my garden are The hellebore, commonly known as the christmas rose because it flowers so early...

I love this colour, and the pieris ...

such a delicate flower. Of course after these white flowers we shall see the wonderful red new leaf bracts forming which give the plant its nickname of the flamebush.

I am always in the garden with my camera and each year I follow the different plants through their flowering cycles, in fact I have written two Squidoo articles about this topic. You can find them:-

1.  A virtual tour of my garden

2. Ten favourite red flowers for your garden

But Spring is a wonderful time for the gardener and photographer, although so I guess are the other seasons each has its own charm. Enjoy your garden.

Springtime Garden Flowers

A simple and straight forward title. I really enjoy pottering in the garden (at least when the sun is shining) and what's more this provides me with an endless range of subjects for my lens during the year. In spring and summer particularly of course we have the colour of the flowers which line the borders in abundance.

Although we are now in high summer and thinking about holidays by the sea, I am taking the opportunity to show off a few of my spring flowers. They herald the coming of the new year and the fact that the holiday season (still thinking about it!) will soon be upon us. So here they are, My springtime favaourite - or at least a few of them.

Shrubs and perennials are what I mainly grow in my garden, low maintenence plants which just require a quick pruning or division to propagate new individual plants. Weeding becomes the only real work.

To start with one of a beautifully coloured hellebore,

I had this as a "moveable" plant at first. I grew it in a

large pot. But I left it in one place too long and the roots

must have decided that they liked the ground and now it is 

a permanent fixture.

Now this is a real beauty, Forsythia.

Brilliant yellow flowers in early spring

without being hidden by leaves which come 

after the blossom. And cuttings are so easy.

One year I used some pruned sticks as supports 

for my peas after they had been lying around for 

a long time. They actually started growing and 

sprouted new leaves - I was amazed, life after death!

A Japanese Quince, unfortunately not an edible variety.

Each year the bush is filled with these tight little red 

blooms, before forming hard fruits.

You may not immediately ecognise this as a Magnolia,

but it is a variety called Magnolia Stellata. Or the Star 

Magnolia because of the shape of its flowers. A very 

welcome early flowering shrub, a little short lived but

beautiful flowers when they are on the plant.

Just to be different, this Christmas cactus (aka Easter cactus, 

depending on the weather?) was on my mom-in-laws kitchen

windowsill for many years. As she passed away recently we

gave it a home and it is still flowering away happily in our kitchen.

I will be posting a few more photos of the flowers in my garden and maybe even some of the photomanipulations which I have created using them. Its all great fun. And look out for some of the wild life in the garden coming up. Birds, amphibians (frogs and toads) and insects including some beautiful butterflies.

Keep taking those photographs and remember - HAVE FUN

Spring Flowers

I have been photogaphing the spring flowers in my garden with my new camera.

forget-me not

 

star magnolia

Bearded Iris

The garden and the flowers which bloom throughout the year have always been a great source of images for me. I love pottering with my camera, especially when the sun is shining. My new Coolpix camera has a feature to prevent images being blurred and I seem to be getting better close-ups with the macro feature. Here are a couple of examples.

You can see more of my garden / flower photographs on Redgage. See my profile on Redgage.

Redgage is a site that pays for content and links to your articles and images on other sites on the web why not give it a try. It is not a get-rich-quick site, far from it but does pay for work that you are posting on to the web in blogs or other sites.