garden photography: Shrewsbury flower show

August’s theme is Open Gardens, or a Flower Show

(This can be a local flower show in your village or town, a national show like Chelsea, Hampton Court etc. or maybe even a small garden open for charity or to the public several times a year)

Fruit Basket Competition:

Annual fairs such as the Gooseberry and Carnation fairs, were introduced in the early eighteen hundreds. They were organised to attract country folk in to the town to sell their surplus produce, but often became scenes of debauchery and got out of hand. The Agricultural Society held its first show in 1875 with the band of the Coldstream Guards playing and the present Shropshire Horticultural Society was established in October the same year. Although flowers and horticulture are the main focus it has always been a family event with entertainment including military bands and show-jumping.

Usually taking place mid-August, the two-day event attracts a lot of visitors. The 2016 ticket was £24 for one of the days, not cheap, but there is a lot to see and do.

Several marquees are erected in the Quarry (park); the Quarry is for professional horticulturists; the Severn is where you’ll find vegetables, cut-flowers, bonsai, children’s classes, bee, honey and wine and the Dingle is home to floral arrangements.

Home-made wines

Display of Dahlias

Even cabbages

Romantic Roses

Pretty fruit baskets

Stunning Sweet peas

Vegetable basket competition

Best leeks

Best squash

Vegetable Basket Competition:

There are also show gardens, school gardens, a craft marquee, farmers and artisans markets, trade stands and food stalls. Celebrity chefs, professional gardeners (this year it was Sarah Raven), bands and other entertainers are present. The show is open for 12 hours each day and ends with a magnificent fireworks display.

Potting shed

Wire sculpture

Sunflowers

Garden refuge

Paving ideas

Wire sculpture

Rustic chair

Planting ideas

Seed collage competition

As well as admiring all the wonderful exhibits you can also buy plants and other items at the show, they even have a crèche where you can leave them and pick up later. Interesting ideas for your own garden can be discovered so take a notebook and camera with you. Be warned. It gets very busy. We went several years ago on a beautiful summer day and the crowds were enormous. We actually sat and watched the show-jumping as we desperately needed a rest!

Floral display

Floral display

Floral display

If you would like to join in with Garden Photography then please take a look at my Garden Photography Page. No complicated rules 🙂

• Create your own post and title it August: Flower Show / Open Garden
• Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
• Add the tag “GardenChallenge” so everyone can find the posts easily in the WP Reader
• Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new theme comes out on the first Sunday in September.
• Please visit the sites in the comments to see what others are posting.

This is the last week for the Open Garden / Flower show theme so if you have some photos to post then get them in quickly. Thank you to everyone who has participated this month, either by linking your own lovely posts, or through comments and likes. I do appreciate you stopping by. Next month is Flower Portrait where I’d like you to showcase one single bloom of your favourite or most unusual plant and please tell me why you are attracted to it. I will be travelling much of this month so may not get to visit your posts until the end of the month, but please don’t let that stop you from joining in. My posts will be scheduled and I shall do my best to keep in touch.

garden photography: wildlife garden

August’s theme is Open Gardens, or a Flower Show

(This can be a local flower show in your village or town, a national show like Chelsea, Hampton Court etc. or maybe even a small garden open for charity or to the public several times a year)

Other gardens open for charity too, the Wildlife Trust in Cornwall have several venues that raise funds for the Cornish Wildlife Trust. I was able to visit Trevoole Farm in June.

This is my kind of garden: old buildings with ancient stone, lichens, moss, peeling paintwork, faded wood, rusting wrought-iron work, corrugated iron roofs. Comfortable and unpretentious.

The Victorian greenhouse has wide reclaimed boards, a chintzy sofa and pews from a church as well as potting benches, terracotta pots, succulents, tomatoes and an impressive grape-vine. I could have moved in.

And lots of seating spots around, in sunshine or shade. Outside the summer-house or suspended between trees.

Pathways lead through tunnels of rambling roses to the potager and herb garden, or to a courtyard in which rusted shelving, old ladders and a disused AGA are put to use for the growing of herbs and vegetables.

At the rear of the courtyard is a shady area dripping with fuchsias and an overgrown porch.

And a track through the bog garden leads into the patchwork potager where an abandoned Morris Minor attracts a lot of attention, and where bees buzz happily among the borage and marigolds, nasturtiums and sweet-peas.

Terracotta pots

Marigolds and Borage

August – hebe

Penstemon

I took a lot of ideas away from this garden, not least which plants to grow to attract the pollinators. I have already planted the borage, nasturtiums, sweet peas and penstemons.

If you would like to join in with Garden Photography then please take a look at my Garden Photography Page. No complicated rules 🙂

• Create your own post and title it August: Flower Show / Open Garden
• Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
• Add the tag “GardenChallenge” so everyone can find the posts easily in the WP Reader
• Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new theme comes out on the first Sunday in September.
• Please visit the sites in the comments to see what others are posting.

garden photography: organic garden

August’s theme is Open Gardens, or a Flower Show

(This can be a local flower show in your village or town, a national show like Chelsea, Hampton Court etc. or maybe even a small garden open for charity or to the public several times a year)

One of the best ways to discover gardens open for charity is through the NGS (National Gardens Schemes) and their annual Yellow Book, the so-called ‘bible’ of garden visiting and the key to secret gardens of England and Wales. I always try to pick up a leaflet of local gardens when visiting a new area of the country, just in case there is one open close by.

Some of the gardens are open to the public at other times, which is lucky if the weather is against you on the charity open day. I haven’t managed to visit many this year here, mainly because whenever the weather has been good enough I have been working in my garden instead. Next year though…

Potager Garden, Constantine

The Potager Garden  has been created out of an old abandoned nursery that was riddled with brambles. It has been transformed into a tranquil space complete with mature trees and herbaceous planting, an organic vegetable patch, hammocks and deck-chairs to relax in and a vegetarian café with luscious cakes.

What I found striking about this garden in July was the colourful borders. Hot orange, yellows, reds.

Daylily

Alstroemeria

Alstroemeria

Californian poppies

Crocosmia

and I seriously coveted this chair

If you would like to join in with Garden Photography then please take a look at my Garden Photography Page. No complicated rules 🙂

• Create your own post and title it August: Flower Show / Open Garden
• Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
• Add the tag “GardenChallenge” so everyone can find the posts easily in the WP Reader
• Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new theme comes out on the first Sunday in September.
• Please visit the sites in the comments to see what others are posting.

garden photography: spring flower show

August’s theme is Open Gardens, or a Flower Show

(This can be a local flower show in your village or town, a national show like Chelsea, Hampton Court etc. or maybe even a small garden open for charity or to the public several times a year)

A flower show is a quintessential English thing. I remember from being a young child that even small village fetes had competitions for dahlias, roses, sweetpeas, gladioli and floral bouquets etc. as well as the cake stall and jams and preserves and who could grow the largest marrow.

In Cornwall the Garden Society holds a spring flower show every year, usually in early April and held at Boconnoc House near Lostwithiel. There are competitive classes, trade stands, show gardens and gardening experts on hand. I have only been once and it was a particularly cold day so I didn’t stay long. They also open their grounds to the public several times a year during May so people can visit the woodlands when they are at their best.

Of course at the time of my visit I didn’t actually live in Cornwall and didn’t even have a garden, so although tempted by some of the offerings on sale there seemed little point.

Now though there could be room in the garden for a statue or two. Small ones that is.

If you would like to join in with Garden Photography then please take a look at my Garden Photography Page. No complicated rules 🙂

• Create your own post and title it August: Flower Show / Open Garden
• Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
• Add the tag “GardenChallenge” so everyone can find the posts easily in the WP Reader
• Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new theme comes out on the first Sunday in September.
• Please visit the sites in the comments to see what others are posting.

August flowers

Felbrigg Hall Walled Garden – Pond and Dovecote

After the blues, purples and paler colours that seem to dominate late spring and early summer, August is full of bolder colours. Reds, oranges, crimsons and deep purples now join in. Though blue still holds its own with hydrangeas, veronicas, agapanthus and fuchsias in full bloom this month.

Agastache

crocosmia

hollyhock

Oxeye daisy

rudbeckia fulgida

romeyna

valerian

Inula magnifica

helenium

zinnia

Or do you have a different favourite in August?