Working in Macro

Since buying my Nikkor 105mm micro lens my interest in macro images has rocketed.  I have always been drawn to detail and structure, but with the ability to get in as close as this plants take on a completely new aspect - their colours fade into one another on an almost cellular level, the refinement of spines and stamens is apparent in a way that is impossible to appreciate with the naked eye.  If you have seen some of these images on my other, photographic blog, here is another chance to see what is making my photographic synapses fire at the moment.  Hope you enjoy the images...

Paul Ridley Design

Spiky Plants

I love the drama of big spiky plants.  As the summer moves to its later stages, the many garden plants that have a thistly habit reach their peak, and their jagged outlines and often grey-silvery colouring are a good antidote to the mounds and cushions of more vibrantly coloured perennials.

Some varieties are perennial - the globe thistles (Echinops), artichokes (Cynara) and bear's breeches (Acanthus) are among these, but some of the most eye-catching are biennials which, having spent a year looking decidedly underwhelming suddenly sprout into amazing Gothic candelabra.  The Scotch Thistle (Onopordum acanthium) is one such - eight feet tall, with felted white leaves in huge sheaves around its winged stem, it branches wildly to bear tomato-sized thistle heads of blue-purple.  It is invaluable as an accent in larger schemes, but give it room - the leaves make uncomfortable close-quarters partners in small spaces.  Once you plant it you have it forever - it self-seeds like crazy.

One family of garden-worthy plants has a wide range of forms that run from something the size of the Onopordum down to much less threatening two-footers.  The eryngiums, or sea hollies do have some perennials among their number, such as the stately E.pandanifolium (widely branched flower stalks to about seven feet, with, in the dark Chelsea Physic Garden form, rusty claret buttons at the ends) - the most elaborately formed flowers belong, however, to the biennial Eryngium giganteum, commonly known as Miss Wilmott's Ghost. 

Green in bud, the whole plant reaches its peak in a blaze of silver, the extravagantly jagged ruff to each flower veined with pale buff as it dries.  The blue flowers are loved by insects, including wasps, and once they are over the plant decays beautifully, holding its structure throughout the winter, the deeply cut and thorny flower heads never better than when frosted on a sunny morning.  The story goes that the Edwardian plantswoman and gardener Ellen Wilmott surreptitiously introduced this, her favourite plant, to other gardens by sprinkling the seed as she visited.  Like the Onopordum it is a vigorous self-seeder, favouring hot situations and gravelly soil.  Besides the species, there is a selected form with even more flamboyant costume, E.g. 'Silver Ghost', but either plant will reward you with a glamorous late-summer display to set against daylilies and grasses, with which they associate particularly well.

Paul Ridley Design

A Sunny Courtyard 2

The planting in my own small courtyard garden is rapidly establishing itself - just ten weeks after planting some of the healthiest stock I have ever seen, courtesy of Orchard Dene Nursery, the garden is a leafy haven, with wonderfully coloured perennials picking up the colour of the Cor-ten steel tank and, incidentally, its fish.  Bronzy-green Carex testacea, fantastically varied Heleniums and purple punctuations from the bomb-proof salvia, S. nemorosa 'Caradonna' are thriving in the sun and heat, with necessary shade at times from the pleached hornbeams at the end of the plot.  These were an extravagance, but worth every penny and stubbed toe in getting their 4m lengths through the house - they screen a pretty ugly view and bring the garden up to first floor level.  As the living accommodation is on the first floor, the extended and newly-canopied balcony leads to a view of this flying hedge, and the glass screen to the balcony allows the view to be appreciated from the interior.

The fish have doubled in size during our two-week absence, thanks to our assiduous house-sitters, although I think we are one down in number - Monty, visible in the top photo, is the likely culprit.

Water plants grow exceptionally fast, and I am looking forward to the first water-lily flower.  As a novice to water gardening I was worried about algae filling the tank up, but over the past three weeks the water has cleared beautifully, without any intervention.

There will be bulbs to plant this autumn, then the spring show to look forward to after a winter admiring the skeletons of the grasses and fennels that surround the garden. 

You can see more images of the development of this garden, from plan through to build, on my website here.

Paul Ridley Design

Enduring Design

Buildings that still function in their original form and serve their original purpose don't come much older than the amphitheatre in Nimes, southern France.  Two thousand years old, give or take a decade or two, this structure still hosts spectacles to enthral the crowds - gladiatorial combat has been replaced with concerts by Pink but whether this represents an evolution of human endeavour is for each of us to decide for ourselves. 

The amphitheatre has regained something approaching its original form, having been converted into a fortress in the Middle Ages and served various other uses since.  Now restored to a limited extent, the layout and routes of flow through the building show the genius of this design - a building that allows for huge crowds to enter and leave quickly and safely (through the 'vomitoria'), and have a clear view of the arena whilst sitting in the tiered seats.  It is probably the fact that the structure has been capable of conversion to different uses throughout its long life that has ensured its survival, and its place now as the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre is assured.

Derived originally by simply placing two semicircular theatres (an existing successful design) together, the amphitheatre is one of the iconic building forms of the ancient world - the scale and the (in part) gory drama associated with these buildings has guaranteed the continued interest in them and in the society they represent. 

Wild beasts fighting each other and lightly-armed fighters, public executions, sea-battles conducted in specially constructed arenas and, the high-point for the audience, the hand-to-hand combat of paired gladiators have given way to concerts and opera but, in Nimes, the arena still hosts contests between animals and man.  A staple spectacle of many southern and Mediterranean cultures since ancient times, the various forms of bullfighting were regular entertainments in the arenas of the area.  Nimes is the capital of French bullfighting, and whatever your feelings about the activity, it can't be denied that there is something remarkable in the continuity of such spectacle in the same building for two thousand years.  There is still blood in the sand, and we are, perhaps, not so different from our Roman forebears as we would like to think.

Paul Ridley Design

Turning Pro?

I have been in discussion with a photographic agency specialising in flower images this week.  They are interested in my work and I will be submitting a selection of photographs for their appraisal early next month.  The process has made me re-evaluate what I do, and it's clear that I have to focus hard on making pictures that are of the best quality, that are a distillation of my style and vision. 

Whether what I produce will appeal to the picture editors of magazines and big companies I don't know as yet - I just know that average images will not suffice, and that more effort has to go into each and every one.  The photos today are the result of a session with these factors very much in mind, with every aspect considered far more carefully than if these were simply for my own benefit.

Paul Ridley Design

On Form

Asthall Manor, near Burford, is home once again to a terrific collection of sculpture in stone.  Every other year the grounds are filled with a collection of inspiring and surprising works that are placed sensitively within the framework of this essentially English garden, drawing the visitor through the space and punctuating the views out across the Windrush valley. Twenty-six artists are represented this year.

The house, home to Baron Redesdale and his brood of Mitford offspring in the early twentieth century, now has a garden, constructed in 1998, by I and J Bannerman.  This couple, known for their blowsy formal-informal country-house style work on large projects - their best-known work is for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove, and demonstrate just how good a garden can look when it refers to the history of garden design while also updating the execution.  Clipped evergreens, placed to give contrast in leaf size and texture, delineate the space, with an abundance of early summer planting billowing about within and around - roses, paeonies, astrantias, alchemilla.  The planting is deceptively simple - great effects are achieved by having slightly different coloured forms of the same plant in close proximity - and the relaxed feel is due to self-seeding, carefully edited to leave paths just clear enough to negotiate.  The garden links to the surrounding countryside through areas of beautifully managed meadow planting, with densities of native wild plants that are just not found in the wild any more.  The garden is apparently maintained by a single gardener.

The sculpture is mainly abstract in nature, and the pieces sit quietly in groves of trees, emerge from swathes of meadow or dominate areas of lawn according to their character.  They have been placed with a sure eye, and accentuate the formal vistas within the garden or act as a counterpoint to a great view across the Cotswold landscape.

The show goes on until 11th July.
http://www.onformsculpture.co.uk/

Paul Ridley Design

Garden Visiting

Gardens are open up and down the country.  Every week during the spring and summer thousands of private gardens are thrown open as part of the National Gardens Scheme, with private homeowners kindly sharing their garden with the general public.  Often a village will have co-ordinated opening, to make a visit well worthwhile. 

My nearest village had an open day on Sunday, with a number of gardens on show and teas in the church hall.  Variety is the key to open gardens - size of plot, planting style, plant collections and mood are all different, and there is something for every visitor to learn.  With a couple of designer colleagues I spent three hours logging hard-landscaping details, some intriguing plant combinations and a couple of very distinct design approaches. 

The dominant theme is, of course 'English Country' - roses are at their pristine best just now, with Nigella, catmints, Alchemilla, Campanulas and Geraniums all contributing to the look which is an essential part of the cultural scene both here and abroad, where it has so many other adherents.  There is a welcome move to extending the season in herbaceous gardens, with grasses and the later flowering families of perennials, but there is little to beat the early summer combinations which have defined the English style for the past century.  This is the look that has made British gardens famous, desired and emulated across the globe, wherever conditions allow.

There are garden makers with very different ideas and priorities, however, and the most striking of these yesterday was a garden, now about five years old, created in oriental style.  Working from an existing Japanese maple and a horizontally trained juniper, this garden was in a distinctly Japanese idiom, without being an exact copy.  No stone lanterns or bamboo water pourers were involved, but the scale and arrangements of the planting, the use of paving and pebbles and, particularly, two beautiful rectangular boulders, smoothed by river water, serving as steps between the levels of the site all contributed to the mood, evoking the contemplative gardens of the East without being a slavish fake.  It felt the most coherent in design terms, as one would hope - a single aesthetic and concept, followed through faithfully and maintained by the owners in the true spirit of the original design.

In another garden on a sloping site down to the river, bold terracing allowed for areas of very different feel - some formal, others less so, with the riverside meadow space home to large single-species groupings of shrubs, with pathways meandering between.  The image is from this same garden - the fruits of Chaenomeles, brown-purple in their immature state, against a sunny wall.

Paul Ridley Design