From “Some Garden Pictures” in Colour in the Flower Garden by Gertrude Jekyll:
“There is a place near my house where a path leads down through a nut-walk to the further garden. It is crossed by a shorter path that ends at a Birch tree with a tall silvered trunk. It seemed desirable to accentuate the point where the paths cross; I therefore put down four square platforms of stone ‘pitching’ as a place for the standing of four Hydrangeas in tubs….
“Just before the tree is a solid wooden seat and a shallow wide step done with the same stone pitching. Tree and seat are surrounded on three sides by a rectangular planting of yews. The tender greys of the rugged lower bark of the Birch and the silvering of its upper stem tell finely against the dark velvet-like richness of the Yew and the leaf-mass of other trees beyond; the pink flowers and fresh green foliage of the Hydrangeas are also brilliant against the dusky green. It is just one simple picture that makes one glad for three months of the later summer and early autumn. The longer cross-path, which on the right leads in a few yards to steps up to the paved court on the north side of the house, on the left passes down the nut-walk… The Birch tree and seat are immediately to the right….
“Standing a little way down the shaded nut-walk and looking back, the Hydrangeas are seen in another aspect, with the steps and house behind them in shade, and the sun shining through their pale green leaves. Sitting on the seat, the eye, passing between the pink Hydrangea flowers, sees a short straight path bounded by a wall of Tree Box to right and left, and at the far end one tub of pale blue Hydrangea in shade, backed by a repetition of the screen of Yews such as enclose the Birch tree.”
From “Reading the Paper” in Ecstasy Among Ghosts: Poems by John L. Stanizzi:
Here, now, the days are long
and the leaves of the hydrangea are supple and leathery,
with raised veins like the back of a hand.
A stick-woman in an old brown dress and floppy hat
stands in the garden
and frightens the birds.
The sun dazzles away the early fog.
Hello!
This is the last of three posts featuring “hydrangibles” — an amusable I invented to describe hydrangeas with fat floaty flowers as well as fanciful imaginary sky vessels — from my garden. The previous two posts are Mophead Hydrangeas (1 of 3) and Mophead Hydrangeas (2 of 3).
The quotation at the top — from Colour in the Flower Garden by Gertrude Jekyll — is one of Jekyll’s descriptions not only of hydrangeas in her garden, but of her own photographs of hydrangeas. Jekyll — well-known as a horticulturalist, gardener, and garden writer — was an early adopter of photography and energetically embraced this emerging technology. According to the biography Gertrude Jekyll: A Vision of Garden and Wood by Judith B. Tankard, Jekyll progressed from her initial interest in photography through photographing gardens for her books, like this:
“In 1885, she took up photography, which enabled her to bring together a number of interests. After she quickly mastered the cumbersome process and set up a dark room at Munstead House, she set out to record those elements indigenous to her native Surrey that were rapidly disappearing. She was fascinated by cottage gardens and their cottagers, and by the special construction trades that gave ordinary rural buildings their local character. In addition to these vernacular traditions, she also photographed her own garden as well as specific plants and tree forms, garden design elements, and the local landscape….
“Gertrude Jekyll’s favorite brother, Sir Herbert Jekyll (1846-1932), who shared many interests and friends with her, was an art patron and engineer as well as an amateur photographer. He assembled several carefully labeled family photograph albums and was interested in the preservation of rural buildings, so it is possible that he taught her the art of photography….
“Jekyll kept prints of most of her photographs in a series of personal photograph albums similar to her brother’s. Gertrude Jekyll’s earliest attempts at photographing and processing were closely supervised by her instructor, as the back of some of the earliest prints are critiqued in a handwriting different from her own. Some are marked ‘little over exposed,’ ‘bad light,’ ‘more pyro — more bromide,’ and ‘keep the camera level.’
“Starting in 1899, with the publication of Wood and Garden, Jekyll used her photographs to illustrate her books, probably using a stock of photographs she had already taken…. [As] Jekyll began to publish books on a regular basis, she now regarded each book that she illustrated as a photo assignment….”
If you would like to view the photographs Jekyll is describing up-top (and see how well she renders the words explaining the photographs), you can find three of them at these links from a Gutenberg edition of Colour in the Flower Garden:
Steps and Hydrangeas
Hydrangea Tubs and Birch-Tree Seat
Hydrangea Tubs and Nut Walk
If you page backward a bit from the last link (to the chapter title “Some Garden Pictures”), you’ll also encounter what could certainly be considered Jekyll’s artist statement, one which combines art, gardening, and the color, light, and compositional characteristics of photography:
“When the eye is trained to perceive pictorial effect, it is frequently struck by something — some combination of grouping, lighting and colour — that is seen to have that complete aspect of unity and beauty that to the artist’s eye forms a picture. Such are the impressions that the artist-gardener endeavours to produce in every portion of the garden…. [There] are some days during the summer when the quality of light seems to tend to an extraordinary beauty of effect. I have never been able to find out how the light on these occasions differs from that of ordinary fine summer days, but, when these days come, I know them and am filled with gladness.”
What a delightful way to describe how we see — and photograph — gardens, and I especially like how Jekyll blends sensory elements of art, botany, and photography in her writing. Now, imagine: if she’d been writing and taking garden photographs a hundred years later, she might have ended out with a blog, just like this!
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
