My walk this week is in Cally Gardens in Scotland where it is all about the plants. We have been visiting this nursery garden for many years and used to enjoy hearing and learning about Michael Wickendon’s plant expeditions and explorations around the world. Sadly Michael died on one of those expeditions a few years ago but the garden has been take over since then by Kevin Hughes and he is clearly developing and maintaining the plants and garden in a similar vein to its past.
I do not have a video from this garden walk to include but the video on the diary page of the Cally website is enjoyable and informative.
My walk this week is in the recently re-opened Swansea Botanic Garden and Singleton Park. The Botanic Garden is within the park and had been closed for the coronavirus lockdown.
And thinking of lockdowns and locks, the sound of a garden attendant locking up at an earlier time than would normally be the case, is featured in the soundscape below and took us a little by surprise. We had not been there very long but enjoyed continuing our walk in the park, taking a different route from that on our last visit.
The garden and park were looking beautiful with so many flowers on display, it was a real pleasure to be there and sit quietly for a short while looking at all the colours and listening to the birds and ambience of the area.
What would we do without these natural (albeit cultivated) spaces in our urban landscapes?
My walk this week is from this time last year when I was visiting Sunbury Walled Garden and gallery because this year I was due to have an exhibition of my audio interactive tapestry weaving. Hopefully the exhibition will happen next year instead. You can see some of my work towards this here.
The interactive aspect of the work was to have been tactile! While the work will still be textural – both weaving and audio – I am now having to think in a different way about how the interaction may be achieved as multiple people touching the same art works may be a problem. This may not be the result or legacy of the Coronavirus lock down but I have to consider that it may be a likely result of the pandemic and our need to maintain a social distance from each other the the things we interact with.
I may even need to consider the degree of interactivity I can provide through proximity sensors! While this changes some important aspects of my art work, I am gradually beginning to see it as an interesting challenge rather than being frustrated by it. Either way, texture will always be important to me and my work, both visually and aurally, so . . . watch this space (as they say) and in the meantime enjoy Sunbury Walled Garden.
Sunbury Gardens Soundscape
The soundscape media player does not show on the WordPress Reader, please visit the website to listen to the soundscape and view the images at the same time.
My walk this week returns to our garden where Spring is in full flow with the birds singing and the colours spreading.
But there is a rare anomaly for me in this post! The images and soundscape are from different weeks with the audio being recorded one week earlier than the photos. This is very unusual for me but there is a reason for it. The recording was made while I was digging the first small vegetable patch and as I did so in the breezy sunshine, a blackbird sang his heart out in the trees behind me and it was such a joy to be doing this work to his and other birds accompaniment.Continue reading→
My walk this week didn’t take me far – just into the garden to look at some of the details of change at this time of year. There is more than the plant life in the colours, textures and patterns there as well. Continue reading→
My walk this week took me wandering round the garden on a bright August day. I was sitting watching the birds flutter and fight over the feeder outside my studio where I was weaving and thinking about the similar aural textures of my activity and that of the birds.
If you listen to the soundscape below you may understand what I mean, but it could just be my imagination. Being able to get out, or at least look at, the natural environments around me is essential to my wellbeing.Continue reading→
My walk this week was a spur of the moment visit to the National Botanic Garden of Wales – worthwhile for the thick growth inside and out at this time of year.
The lakeside flowers, kitchen garden and double walled garden were blooming well and if I could only present the scents as well as the sights and sounds, the sensory picture would be almost complete.Continue reading→
My walk this week is around Sunbury-on-Thames walled garden. It is just a few minutes down the river from Hampton Court where my walk took place last week.
I was lucky with the weather and thoroughly enjoyed both these recent walks. The reason I was there was not for walking but to discuss the arrangements for an exhibition of my tapestry weaving and sound work to be held in the Sunbury Embroidery Gallery next year.Continue reading→
