Flowers

Thursday Thoughts – Great Dixter

/ Leya / 35 kommentarer

When we left Sissinghurst that day, I wondered how any garden would be able to match it. But, Great Dixter did. Great Dixter is a house in Northiam, East Sussex, England. It was built in 1910–12 by architect Edwin Lutyens. The original Northiam house, dating from the mid-15th century, was acquired by a businessman named Nathaniel Lloyd in 1909.

Lloyd and Lutyens began the garden at Great Dixter, but it was Lloyd’s son Christopher Lloyd, a well known garden writer and television personality, who made it famous. The garden is in the arts and crafts style, where the planting is profuse, yet structured, and has featured many bold experiments of form, colour and combination.

The garden is currently managed by Fergus Garrett, who worked closely with Lloyd up until his death in 2006 as Head Gardener and introduced a number of innovations into the planting scheme.

I hope you enjoy the variety of this garden in my short gallery! For species and other facts, please visit Jude again!

I am sorry to say I haven’t even tried to find the names of all the flowers, but, Jude will know.

They are all glorious. The house and gardens are my number one from this week.

There will still be more gardens to come…

Thursday Thoughts – Sissinghurst, a Gardener’s Dream

/ Leya / 39 kommentarer

Sarah of Travel With Me posted on Sissinghurst for the LACP this week, and I recommend reading her post for its beauty and for the background history of the house and grounds. For species and extraordianry flower knowledge, I recommend you go to Jude’s beautiful site. As I visited some weeks ago, I had prepared a post for today – but this garden is well worth visiting more than once.

Sissinghurst in Kent is a famous English garden, with a series of ‘garden rooms’, each filled with different planting schemes and unique designs. This garden is a result of Harold Nicolson’s design and the plantings of his wife, author Vita Sackville-West.

It was such a treat to visit a place where creative cooperation showed such magnificent results. I have read several works of Virginia Woolf, and knew she had an intimate relation with Vita Sackville-West. I can imagine they must have enjoyed each others company as creative souls. I could almost see them walking together here, arm in arm through the gardens.

I loved the different ”garden rooms”. Maybe mostly the white garden and the yellow garden.

This is the view from the top of the tower, where the different ”rooms ” are clearly showing. And Vita Sackville-West’s writing room in the tower was extremely difficult to photograph, as it was in the middle of the narrow staircases and only a tiny platform to land on while other visitors were passing by.

I hope you enjoyed Sissinghurst once again!

Thursday Thoughts – The End of Summer

/ Leya / 21 kommentarer

Summer is moving towards its end, and the evenings are soft with bloom in the fading light. Shorter days are coming, and I walk in my garden to meet my friend, the hedgehog. He walks around, poking the ground, making little grunting sounds. If I talk to him, he stops and listens, turning his little nose towards me. No camera – then he wouldn’t listen. To think that already 30 million years ago he was here. A sweet character. Hopefully he will survive and outlive mankind.

A short shower, and I know some delicate worms will be good food for my friend.

Rounding the glass house, I caught the last sunrays in a Cosmos chocamocha – which sent us a fiery…

…goodnight.

Thursday Thoughts – Romantic Scotney Castle

/ Leya / 28 kommentarer

A week in England now and then, is a thing for everyone, according to me. The beauty of the English countryside, with its lush gardens and many castles make for a relaxing holiday and reloaded batteries.

Please come along and enjoy some of my memories!

Scotney old castle was built in the 14th century, and from the opener you can see it seems taken right out of a fairy tale. The new house, in the above image, was built when the old castle became too run down. The last owners, the Hussey family, bequethed the property to the National Trust in 1970. Today there was exhibitions inside, and the surroundings lovely kept.

The collections in the new house are largely from the 19th and 20th century. Of course a bit of English humour is a must…

The old castle, the quarry and the walled garden made this visit a joy, despite the rain. In fact, this was our first day in England, and this was the only rain we got for a week! Incredible. On one of our travels to Good Ol’ England we had rain for three weeks, and I caught the worst cold ever from it. (Fortunately only when we came back home again!)

Lastly, if you scroll back to the beautiful lady in the painting, she is sitting on the balcony, overlooking this dreamy place – Scotney Castle.

Lens-Artists Challenge #308 – Perfect Pairs

/ Leya / 38 kommentarer

This week Elizabeth of Albatz Travels is our guest host – and she has got an exciting task for us! Please visit her site for excellent guiding to diptychs:

A diptych is two images placed in proximity to one another, forming a pair. To make a successful pairing there should be several things in common, and something very different, contrasting.

How about using mirrors?

My natural(!) choice is flowers and trees. And flowers from English gardens this time.

And throughout the paths of flowery fireworks, there were Castles interspersed…

So, we will move over to totally manmade art, where wonderful wallpapers in the castles created indoor gardens as well, and a different dimension through mirrors.

Artworks are interesting, for pairings too. In Japan our visit to the teamLabs exhibition with mirroring ”eggs” was fascinating.

And finally, people. The Golden Week in Japan gives you endless opportunities to enjoy beautiful people and clothes. This lovely young couple is not the same as the couple in the carriage – but their outfits go so well together. In my eyes, they make the perfect pair – and pairs.

Thank you, Elizabeth for a great learning challenge!

Last week, Leanne lead us through wonderful and different “Tourist Attractions”, capturing the essence of a place.  Next week, PR will explore “Balconies,” so be sure to visit Flights of the Soul next Saturday. 

Lens-Artists Challenge #307- Tourist Attractions

/ Leya / 21 kommentarer

Leanne Cole is our fantastic host this week, and she invites us to show what the normal tourist wants to see – but in another way. ”You might go to the same place, but you are after something different.”

So her challenge is to look for those photos that are of tourist attractions, but where we have tried to get the untypical image of it. They can be near or far away in other countries.

I have just returned from a trip to England, so I am a bit late, but here we go…with Japan! Japan was a delightful country to visit this spring, and the first gallery shows some famous attractions – my way:

The superfast Shinkansen train, Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto (Inari is the god of rice and sake and the messenger is a fox), Kawachi Fujien (The world famous wisteria garden in Kitakyushu), the Shibuya crossing in rain (- the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world with about 2300 crossings every 3,3 minute) and lastly, Tokyo Sky Tree.

From Sweden then, not that many:

Stockholm in double exposure (City Hall and Central Station). The Doll Museum was closed, but my shot was taken through the window.

Thank you to Tina for her beautiful and thought provoking challenge on Habitats two weeks ago, and I hope you all had a lovely week off too! Thank you again to Leanne Cole for leading us this week – please visit her site for always amazing photography.

I hope you want to join in next week when our next guest host, Elizabeth of Albatz Travel Adventures, challenges us to share Pairs.