Circle B Bar

Circle B Bar

Image by Ricymar Fine Art Photography
Circle B Bar reserve Lakeland FL

Circle B Bar reserve Lakeland FL

Ascott House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, UK | National Trust gardens with extensive planting of flowering daffodils in spring (10 of 22)

Image by ukgardenphotos
Ascott House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, UK: The attractive gardens at Ascott House, a UK National Trust property in Buckinghamshire, England have an extensive mixture of formal, informal and natural garden features.

A visit to Ascott House provides a lot of variety and different types of garden environment. It is particularly impressive in spring time with massed plantings of spring bulbs as far as the eye can see. The wide herbaceous borders in summer are excellent too and all year interest is provided by the land art in the Lynn garden.

This photo shows mature trees underplanted with massed flowering daffodils in spring.

Details Features range from fields of daffodils, narcissi and fritillaries beneath mature trees in spring; flowering meadows of tulips and spring bulbs; traditional English herbaceous borders with stunning planting in high summer; colorful bedding plant schemes surrounding impressive and grand fountains (such as the Venus and Cupid / Eros fountains by the famous American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story); a picturesque lily pond and thatched summerhouse; neatly clipped yew hedges and even a topiary sundial.

A relatively new feature of the garden is an innovative area devoted to ‘land art’ or ‘earth sculpture’ where mounds of earth and ditches (echoing the earth works of Iron Age Britain on the nearby Chiltern Hills) are planted with grasses, ornamental trees and combined with tasteful water features. The many shades of green are soothing to the eye and give this part of the garden (called the Lynn Garden) a very tranquil atmosphere.

Location: Ascot House, Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire, LU7 0PS, UK

UK OSGB Map Reference: OS165:SP891230

Links: A brief description of the house and gardens, together with opening details, is given on the National Trust, Ascott House website.

© 2011 ukgardenphotos

Ascott House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, UK | National Trust gardens - meadows filled with flowering spring bulbs (1 of 22)

Image by ukgardenphotos
Ascott House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, UK: The attractive gardens at Ascott House, a UK National Trust property in Buckinghamshire, England have an extensive mixture of formal, informal and natural garden features.

A visit to Ascott House provides a lot of variety and different types of garden environment. It is particularly impressive in spring time with massed plantings of spring bulbs as far as the eye can see. The wide herbaceous borders in summer are excellent too and all year interest is provided by the land art in the Lynn garden.

This photo shows one of the meadows full of flowering narcissi and tulips in spring. It was a real joy to be there.

Details Features range from fields of daffodils, narcissi and fritillaries beneath mature trees in spring; flowering meadows of tulips and spring bulbs; traditional English herbaceous borders with stunning planting in high summer; colorful bedding plant schemes surrounding impressive and grand fountains (such as the Venus and Cupid / Eros fountains by the famous American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story); a picturesque lily pond and thatched summerhouse; neatly clipped yew hedges and even a topiary sundial.

A relatively new feature of the garden is an innovative area devoted to ‘land art’ or ‘earth sculpture’ where mounds of earth and ditches (echoing the earth works of Iron Age Britain on the nearby Chiltern Hills) are planted with grasses, ornamental trees and combined with tasteful water features. The many shades of green are soothing to the eye and give this part of the garden (called the Lynn Garden) a very tranquil atmosphere.

Location: Ascot House, Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire, LU7 0PS, UK

UK OSGB Map Reference: OS165:SP891230

Links: A brief description of the house and gardens, together with opening details, is given on the National Trust, Ascott House website.

© 2011 ukgardenphotos

Leonardslee Gardens, West Sussex, UK | View from memorial table towards lake through flowering azaleas and rhododendrons (7 of 19)

Image by ukgardenphotos
Leonardslee Gardens: Landscape Garden and lake views

For a few weeks in May of each year, Leonardslee Gardens in West Sussex, UK, erupt into a spectacular display of the most amazing color combinations of flowering rhododendrons and azaleas. The green, wooded valley gardens then turn into a place of vibrant colors and outstanding natural beauty. Filled with the scent of the massed azalea plantings the whole area becomes a forest paradise. Visitors have often described its beauty and tranquility as being like ‘heaven on earth’.

This photograph shows a view that often appears on Leonardslee postcards - a vista from the memorial table, taken on a bright day in early summer, overlooking rhododendrons and azaleas in full bloom towards the distant lake.

For many years, tens of thousands of visitors have enjoyed the ‘calendar photos’ qualities of this Grade 1 historic garden. Unfortunately, the gardens are now closed to the public as they have been sold to an international businessman.

Details: Leonardslee Gardens is a truly outstanding English landscape garden having a Grade 1 Historic Garden status (English Heritage Register). It covers about 240 acres (97 Hectares) in a wooded valley, contains seven lakes and is extensively planted with azaleas, ancient rhododendrons (some well over 100 years old), acers and camellias - all with a delightful under planting of bluebells in spring.

The great Victorian plant collector, Sir Edmund Loder (who gave his name to the large flowered and scented Loderi Rhododendron Hybrids) purchased the estate in 1889 and planted large numbers of Rhododendrons there. Sir Giles Loder later planted an extensive collection of camellias at Leonardslee. The estate remained in the hands of five generations of the Loder family until 2010 when it was sold to an international businessman. However, the Loder Rhododendron nursery was not sold and is still in business.

Location: Leonardslee Gardens, Lower Beeding, Horsham, West Sussex, England, RH13 6PP, UK. UK Map references: OSGB36 Grid ref:: TQ220259: Map tile ref: TQ22NW40

Links: A more detailed history of Leonardslee Gardens is available on Wikipedia. Leonardslee nursery is still run by Chris Loder and his website contains useful information on Rhododendron Loderi, its varieties and hybrids.

© 2011 ukgardenphotos

Shall we dance ?

Image by Joe Dsilva
That's one of my favorite Richard Gere movies, but the context here is a bit different ... Shooting sunset with a bunch of flowers in the foreground has been in my bucketlist for a while ..., So when I spotted the balsam roots blooming on the slopes of Steptoe butte, I thought I had it ..., but I was already a month late for the blooms, so most of the flowers had withered away, the Sunset was anything but dramatic, save the crepescular rays I was able to capture in the background and my arch nemesis, wind was there to ruin it all. The Balsam blooms swayed like the serpents on Medusa's head in the severe winds making it tricky to catpure a shot.

Finally it all came down to a compromise, so I took a few shots grudgingly at 1600 ISO hoping the winds won't blur much. This image is the result of manual focus stacking of three different shots. I had to do it manually because the winds moved flowers all over the place making it difficult to get them at the same spot across all images.
. Focus stacking helps to get a sharp picture for elements at different distance from the sensor, which otherwise gets blurred off due to insufficient depth of field. A reverse GND filter was used to reduce the brightness of the sky.

My bucketlist still has this shot as pending, but this ended up being a good prep work for a better day.


Follow on FaceBook

Connect on Google+