3 Free eBooks – October 2016

There were some beautiful books I looked through online in October. Here are my picks for the top 3.

Brooke, E. Adveno. The Gardens of England. London: T. McLean. 1858. Available from the Internet Archive here. The illustrations are a step back into the mid-1800s both in terms of the grand gardens that surrounded large estates and how people interacted with them.

Harrap, Anne and Simon. Orchids of Britain and Ireland: A field and site guide. London: A&C Black. 2010. Available from the Internet Archive here. Skipped ahead by almost 150 years…and color photography! I am always partial the slipper orchids.

Duncan, James; Cuvier, Georges. The Natural History of British Butterflies. Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars. 1840. Available from HathiTrush here. As I looked through the images in this book, I wondered how many of these butterflies still exist. A lot has happened to the environment since 1840.

Enjoy!

Brookside Garden Scenes

Gardens are more than just plants. Brookside Gardens has some good examples of physical structures that provide framing for the living part of the garden.  I photographed forsythia in two settings: with a curved brick wall

And reflected in the pond. Which scene do you like the best? I’m always partial to reflections.

The color of pots – and their shape – frame the flowers within.

The bench provides a sense of scale for the holly and redbud.

The maze is quite simple – a place to walk around slowly…and contemplate.

The conservatories always hold treasure like this bunch of bananas. Soon the roof will get a white wash to keep the conservatory from getting too hot during the summer.

This part of the conservatory will be used for the butterfly exhibit in a few months. Right now you can barely see the water in the center and the surrounding rocks…they are just enough to give platforms and backdrop to the dense plantings.

So – walls, ponds, benches, a maze, conservatories, bubbling water and rocks….there is more to Brookside than plants!