Our yellow broom hangs out over the garden path and so I brush past it every time I go up or down the garden. It is a welcome encounter đ
Tag Archives: flowers
The Concertina of Time
Time being what it is, i.e. flexible/fickle/short/relative, my walk this week will not be happening. I hope you miss the “walk” but still enjoy my posts through this week of Spring flowers. Most are from our garden and the images are a mixture of camera and iPhone photos.
First up – crocuses đ
My Walk this Week – Hints of Spring
The photos for my walk this week span a few days. I took the same walk each morning for four days and was partly inspired by the first hint of Spring – i.e. sunshine!
It’s another short local hill walk. The hill is fairly small, but steep and rises to about 450 feet. At the bottom my route followed that of the local river with snow drops lining its banks. I was tempted to stop and take some (rare for me) slow exposure shots of the water falling over the weir.
I didn’t have my tripod with me and so most of the shots were discarded. However, there were a few I liked including the underexposed one taken with a faster shutter speed and which shows the patterns and textures in the falling water.
NBGW and Reviewing The Week 44
This is the smallest of the three lakes at the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW). It is the one that welcomes you along with the ducks when you arrive and makes for a beautiful and relaxing memory to depart with along with all the amazing scenery, flowers and plants, architecture, art, science and history of the place and of course, walks. It is well worth repeated visits and having watched it develop over these past fifteen years or so, I look forward to a lot more growth in the future.
Click the first in the block of images below to view the week’s photos in sequence.
Colour in the Gardens
Autumn colours are wonderful but back in September at the tail end of Summer, the colour in the Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) was not confined to the plants and flowers. A tortoiseshell butterfly also displays its colourful beauty while in the background of the first image you can see the curve of the Great Glasshouse, the largest single span glass house in the world, designed by Norman Foster.
Flowers in the Great Glass House
However often we go for a walk at the Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW), we cannot miss out one of its main features – the Great Glass House. The architecture itself is interesting enough on its own, but the pleasure of walking around its different planting zones cannot be matched. It is also impossible not to take photos of at least some of the exotic flowers. Many, many others have done this – these are some of mine.
The Wallace Garden
Within the Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) where we were walking in September, there are a number of other gardens. My photos today are from the Wallace Garden and although they do not show the double helix arrangement of the paths, as this was not as easy to see as it is sometimes due to the content of the beds, it seemed less important to try and capture it.
It seems there is something different in the garden every time we visit and what you see below is some of what was there on this occasion in September – it will be different now and then again in Spring.
Wallace Garden exit/entrance
Alfred Russel Wallace
Sculpture in the Wallace Garden by Dilys Jackson
Flowers and Water
When visiting the Botanic Gardens (NBGW) the natural course to take on a walk is up the main path from the entrance towards the fountain at the end of a small lake. From here you have a number of options in terms of direction but if you have children with you (or even if you haven’t), the temptation is then to follow the twisting miniature stream set into the centre of the walkway.
Eventually, at the top of the path, you reach the simple but attractive water feature that feeds the meandering stream and you can look back down the way you have come and scan some of the other areas of the gardens.
All but one of the photos I am posting this week are from our walk here near the end of  September. However, I had to look to my archives for a shot of the twisting footpath stream and this one is from June 2011. My youngest daughter once said a few years after the gardens opened in 2000 that this was her favourite place in Wales – I am sure that this magical twisting trickle had something to do with it.
