Category: Landscape

A Better Place

Design, Landscape

The garden was over-grown and filled with an invasive wild plant which was choking all the shrubs and the lawn. The neighbouring garden had at one time included 25 mature fir trees which blocked light from this garden causing shrubs such as the Pittosporum Garnettii, Ceanothis and Cercis Canadensis, searching for light, to grow into trees. After an extensive clearing out of weeds, overgrown shrubs and general detritus, the garden was left with just the trees and shrubs that would come into their own with careful pruning and ground cover planting beneath.

dismal

A pyramidal greenhouse, somewhat abandoned, sat sadly in the shaded side of the garden, the path to the garage had all but disappeared in the undergrowth.

pond

The circular pond had originally been fed by a little rill running down the side of the garden from a stone bowl near the house, the circulating water being pumped around by a small fountain in the pond. Over the years the pond had become infested with weed and the water-lilies had died, the rill’s foundations failed.

cleared

The ugly cracked concrete crazy paving was dug up and replaced with a larger area paved with blue/green stone leaving plenty of space for the table and chairs, a wide path was laid with a 127º angle echoing the footprint of the greenhouse and with shallow steps leading down the slight incline to the garage.Steps

The planting scheme was designed by John McCormack to create a low maintenance, informal garden that has plenty of interest in every season, the layout is quite masculine and perfectly set off by the wide variety of leaf shapes of the plants. The deciduous plants have magnificent autumn colours and numerous evergreen grasses of 3 or 4 types and heights are laid out between the trees, their upright stems catching the light. Other signature shrubs have been planted, Hydrangea Quercifolia (an old favourite), the climber Trachelospermum jasminoides to splay out over the brick wall, Viburnam Davidii, Pittosporum Tom Thumb and lots more Hellebores to join the existing collection. The Liriope Muscari have wonderful arching dark green leaves and purple flower spikes which turn to stems of black berries in late Autumn.

water trough

The pond has been filled in and replaced, in a different position, with a large water trough, a sort of infinity pool with the water level right up to the lip, reflecting the sky.
Before the tank was properly installed it was left for a while upside down with a sculpture displayed on top.The trough will gradually turn rust red on the outside, which will look good through the grey strap leaves of the Iris Germanica and the delicate white blooms of the Gaura Lindhei and the dark purple Cosmos planted in front. A few bright orange Crocosmia and spring bulbs as well as summer meadow flowers will fill in the gaps with splashes of colour.

sculptureIMG_5519-1

dusk

A place that for a long time has been forlorn is now a sunny spacious delightful garden to spend time in or to look upon at night when lit up by strategically placed lamps.

Thanks to John, Mario and Michal of JMC Landscapes and John Richardson who made the trough.

Filtered Light and Shade

Architecture, Landscape, Photography

A visit to the sculpture park at Chateau Chaumont brought about an unexpected delight, part installation, part sculpture, by a Japanese artist, sending misty vapour into the landscape and providing a mystical medium for visitors to explore. The carefully arranged square of water/mist jets, set high up in the trees, emits a continuous cloud of vapour for around 5 minutes at 5 minute intervals. Meanwhile the mist responds to whatever windy eddies may prevail and wanders off over the adjacent lake or hangs about making the unwary visitor damp and soggy but inspired by the soft light filtered by the mist.

http://www.domaine-chaumont.fr/en_can_can-artistes?scat=4b&expandable=1

In the mist

In the mist 2

We visited another much smaller chateau at St Aignan, where the sweeping steps leading from the church below to the chateau courtyard above provided a delightful opportunity to play with shadows and light. The balustrade of sandstone, or is it limestone, worn away by rain, catches and disperses the early evening light.
balustrade

evening sun

Chateau steps

Later in the evening during a stroll through the village, we spied on people’s windows, shrouded in gaudy lace or masked by dimpled glass. We couldn’t make out whether this was a perfectly ordinary desk with its own desk-lamp in silhouette, or a more sinister creature biding its time before taking over the world.

desk-lamp

Istanbul – The Galata Bridge

Landscape, People, Photography

The Galata Bridge bears witness to all sorts of stories every day, little dramas and patterns of activity. Tucked away under the start of the bridge and the below the road, is a dismal, dirty corner where a boy sits on a tan leatherette-covered chair, the same colour as his arms. He sits reversed on the chair, using the high back as a chin-rest whilst he reads the paper. Perhaps he is a guarding something that is not apparent at first sight or maybe he is just whiling away time. A little further along a figure sits leaning against a red electrical supply box, one leg up on the concrete ledge, the other supporting him on the floor. He is asleep, he has been asleep for some time, hoping to pass a few more hours in oblivion. deadtime

I return the next day curious to know more, I find the same dark corner, the same chair but a different boy and another figure in place of the sleeping man.
another boy

The elaborate  ironwork, once a delicate sea green is rusting and stained now and has become a collector of forgotten items.

forgotten

Fishing is a universal sport wherever there is water but here especially as the water is deep and full of mackerel, eel and mullet.  Amateurs and experienced fishermen crowd the balustrades catching around 76 tonnes of fish per year.

Fishing

Below the road and tram-way there is a lower level full of restaurants and bars, quiet in the mornings and raucous at night with revellers singing and dancing after they have dined.

new Mosque

At FISH POINT, one of the four identical staircases,  a third of the way over on the East side, the waiter gesticulating whilst talking on his mobile phone is annoyed because he has no customers, the boy on the stairs can’t find his friends, they’re probably on the opposite side of the bridge. The women looking out to sea – are they wondering what it would be like to sail away to foreign lands. Meanwhile the back wall under the sign of Fish Point, is protected by buffers which appear to be gigantic McVities shortbread biscuits.fishpoint

Along the centre of the bridge at this lower level runs a service corridor, a functional, dour place lit by fluorescent tubes and yet two men choose to spend their lunchtime break there rather than on the outside. service corridor

On the other side of the bridge I see a boy cowering on the steps, crying. I wonder if he belongs to the woman in the foreground or the man behind but later I pass by again and he’s still there. In London a boy alone at that age would be a worry but in Istanbul children are everywhere out on the streets selling trinkets or guide-books. I do wish I had spoken to him though.

lost boy

I stood for quite a while watching people climb these stairs, their heads would appear and disappear tauntingly, some shorter people visible at the bottom, only reappeared right at the top once they were back on the flat.

IMG_0731a

Galata Bridge, looking back to the New Mosque, in a previous incarnation around 1910, much lower and made of wood. There are no trams, no cars and no horses, I presume like in present day crowded hilly bustling Istanbul, most local movement of goods is done by men with carts, trolleys or shoulders.

Galata Bridge, Istanbul (Constantinople)

Visiting South Wales

Art, Landscape, Photography, Portraiture

I had the pleasure of accompanying Sally Moore to the opening of her latest exhibition in the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff last Thursday. An exhibition of just 16 intensely worked paintings, tremendously detailed and full of dark humour and reflections on the absurdities of life. I loved Sally’s self-portrait version of a Vermeer – already sold.

Sally Moore

We stayed in Barry Island and enjoyed walking around the area and despite the poor weather, I was inspired to record some of the absurdities of Barry Island life.

A crop of some wild, persistent and fantastically yellow  flowers made a striking foreground for the pewter coloured lowering sky and the old brick chimney stack.
industrial chimney

The local council dilligently sweeps the beach each morning with a tractor leaving an array of textures in the damp sand, overwritten gradually through the day by the imprints of birds feet, dog paws and footsteps. The rows of sweeping are so regular, the patterns recalling those of cable knit jumpers.

barry beach
imprints

This poor forgotten boat seems to have become a victim of its own name.
menace II society

On Sunday in Swansea, the weather was at its Welsh best, not so “Flaming June” more of a flaming nuisance. Fine and very wet rain blew horizontally across the bay all day misting up the windows.
Swansea Bay in the rain