Saturday the 17th february

I came across a new artist yesterday, his paintings were illustrated in Resurgence which I had only just got round to reading. Richard Cartwright, you can find him on the web but the three paintings I chose have to do with the garden.  The first is called 'Garden with Evening Primrose.'  I love this plant for its habit of growing unexpectedly on waste spaces.  If in the evening you stand by the plant and smell its sweet perfume, a bud will unfold for you flaring out into that pale lemon and then for a moment the petals will droop until it finds its feet from this rebirth.  Don't just buy the hybrids Oenothera, just allow the lanky, very untidy flowering plant into your garden, perhaps along with the sweet smelling nicotiana (white of course).

 

The Patio Garden

The summer garden

The last two remind me of Gertrude Jeykll's gardening, the use of colour, the palette that blended the reds down to the soft blues, a miracle of getting one's flowers to bloom at the same moment.  An art only to be seen in some of our old established gardens.

Our garden will never rise to such heights, no trellising with roses growing over, just neat lawn, pebble driveway and large bed overshadowed by the house - I would have designed it so differently.....

On the page next to one of the illustrations are David Attenborough's word, now our spokesman for the environment, perhaps he really did start the plastic debate with his programme on The Blue Planet.

"We have a finite environment - the planet.  Anyone who thinks that you can have infinte growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist....

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