At the end of last month we made another visit to these wonderful gardens:
The weather has been very cold, wet and blustery for a few weeks. We had decided on a visit whatever the weather and to dress accordingly. However, according to the forecasts, there was a break on Thursday afternoon; so we took a chance and went for it. For most of the time the weather held out – there was just one hard shower whilst we were there (a good time to retire to the tea rooms) and another just as we were leaving.
Although the sky was overcast much of the time, there was the occasional break in the clouds allowing the sun to shine through. The photo above was taken during one such period. This is a display of Ranunculus in a pot on the edge of one of the ponds in the ‘Glasshouse Garden’ near the tearooms.
I took a few photos from different angles of these displays. I wanted to show not just the display but the background as well so as to give context. This is one of the better ones. A couple of photos taken from the other side was spoilt by a large bloom that had faded – I would have liked to deadhead a few specimens…
In this next photo I wanted to capture the vibrant colour of the tulips. How you see this image depends on the quality and set-up of your computer screen – on mine the colours are really bold and vibrant, reflecting the colour I saw when I took the photo.
One of the problems was the blustery conditions – it was quite difficult to get a good photo without movement.
This next photo shows some of the formal displays of potted plants by the windows and door to the office – wind wasn’t so much of a problem here. Again, I took several views, but I feel this is the best. It gives context to the plants. I also managed to remove from the photograph the ‘No Admittance’ sign on the door.
I did manage to get some of the larger scenes – this is one of my favourites:
Again, taken during a break in the weather this is the ‘Long Border’. I do like the white clouds against a blue sky but it is very difficult to do this without the clouds losing detail to pure white. I think I have achieved a reasonable balance here.
In this final view you can see the dark clouds that characterised much of the visit. When this was taken, it was quite dull (as you would expect from the cloud cover) and very windy. Many photos I had to discard due to the wind movement causing blur.
You can see the full set of photographs in the EROV Garden Gallery.