Garden Art

GARDEN ART

I often wonder if I have just been lucky, or if fate intended me to have two creative careers.

My horticultural career lasted over thirty years and involved not just growing plants but also using them in the landscape in the design of parks, gardens, housing, highways, retail, industry and forestry.

I got immense pleasure from the creative processes especially returning a few years later when the landscape matured and the improvements could be seen and enjoyed by the public. Some schemes were on a small scale, a shop, a factory, a few flower beds then others were on a more grander scale with ample scope for your creative ideas. A new golf course in Darlington desperately needed trees everywhere, then Livingston new town needing a programme of daffodil planting of over two million bulbs over three years.

All this time I enjoyed a range of hobbies from wine making, swimming, travelling, hill walking and painting.

However, I changed careers in 1992 to become a full time artist and now my horticultural creations are of a more modest scale, such as a hanging basket or plant tub, and my painting has become the source for my creative energies.

Having been blessed, or cursed with the creative gene does bring great pleasure when your work is admired, whether it be a colourful garden, an immense pumpkin or a beautiful painting. The drawback comes when you consider the possibility of retirement. When I officially retire my two main hobbies will be gardening and painting. So, at what point can I tell myself I am retired.

Anyway, coming back from thoughts of retirement, I always seem to find a new project to work on in the art world, and it often starts in the garden or on the allotment.

Allotment Art

A few years back I started growing saskatoon fruit bushes in pots around the house, but soon realised they needed more space to grow, so I decided to find an allotment for them.

It would also serve to grow other fruits, vegetables and flowers getting me back into growing plants again. Then of course there is the exercise value as well as the health benefits of fresh produce all year round.

The new plot needed a fair bit of tidying up to remove old wild brambles, weeds, broken fences and repairing the dilapidated shed. A meandering path in the wrong place needed removing and replacing, so since I have no problem working outdoors in all seasons these tasks kept me on site regularly throughout the winter.

Even when the snow came I couldn't resist a trip to the allotment to see how the plot looked covered in a blanket of snow.

The site was a winter wonderland of untouched pristine snow and as I had my camera with me I walked up and down every path as ideas for winter landscape paintings appeared at every turn. My digital camera was working overtime. City Road allotments have been going for years and now most plots have some kind of shed and greenhouse in every shape possible and in various degrees of hastily repaired dereliction.

Broken down fences, steps, scattered water barrels, pots, boxes, posts, wheelbarrows and old gnarled apple trees covered in snow made perfect subjects for a series of garden winter landscape paintings. One of my neighbours suffering from a bad back recently, had not kept a very tidy plot, but his stack of old boxes, pots, barrels and pallets piled against his semi derelict shed was just perfect. Another plot with an old apple tree pruned way beyond any sensible shape added another perfect image to be captured on canvas.

I enjoyed creating this series so much that I decided to run an allotment painting workshop in the spring.

This turned out to be very popular and at the time there were many plots covered in poppies and other summer flowers. However different people see beauty in different ways. One lady just loved the clever graffiti covering a large shed and for another it was the washing hanging from the tenement clothes lines blowing in the sun.

I also found more inspiration for another series of allotment paintings in both watercolour and acrylic balancing flowers and vegetables against the allotment furniture and structures.

Garden Flowers

Painting the “Winter on the Allotment” series took several months by which time spring had emerged and my garden was a picture of flowers.

This time I decided to throw caution aside and got out some of my biggest canvases. These images were to be very bold using large flowers with impact. My first was the Iceland poppies which brighten up the spring and continue right through the summer as long as you keep taking off the seed heads.

Next was some brilliant candy striped early tulips, Carnaval de Nice contrasting the illuminated blossoms against a deep blue background. A beautiful lemon narcissus was next then my flag iris started to bloom and gave me quite a choice for another large canvas.

I grow a wide range of iris which come in many colours supplied from specialist hardy plant growers in Shropshire, Claire Austin. I chose the deep purple, Dusky Challenger and again used a contrasting pale blue background.

Spring leads into summer and I was overwhelmed with choice of flowers to paint. There was not time to do them all so the camera captured hundreds of images to be stored on my computer so I can pull them out at any time. The digital camera allows you to keep the best and delete the rest.

The apple trees were terrific especially when you zoom in to capture the flowers as a close up, then my bright red oriental poppies gave a fantastic though short lived display.

Rhododendrons and azaleas seem to thrive in this mild wet climate so gave me dazzling blossoms which I like to zoom in on to capture individual flowers or small groups of them.

Another brilliant red tuberous begonia growing in a deep blue flower pot caught my eye. I look forward to getting that one on canvas.

Lilies and fuchsias will always give great value, but you need to photograph them in full sun against a dark background or sometimes I can find a low angle to get them against a deep blue summer sky.

Garden Art Exhibition

John is showing some of his flower paintings at the Dundee Art Society Autumn Exhibition at 17 Roseangle open from Saturday 30^th October to Sunday 7^th November 2010. Open every day from 11am to 5pm.

Garden Blog

I have created a garden blog to store these weekly articles in, so if you wish to look back to any previous feature they are stored in date order. They can also be viewed by title and keywords. The blog is called the Scottish artist and his garden blogspot.

Saskatoon update

Landward TV will be featuring John's saskatoon fruit bushes on their programme about growing and using Scottish superfoods on Friday 29^th October at 7pm on BBC2

End

Garden and studio work in January 2009

A few sunny days has allowed a bit of gardening between snow showers.

Feed the Ground
Weeds and old leaves have been tidied up and bush and climbing roses pruned to allow me to spread compost on the ground where the spring bulbs will soon be appearing. This also makes the soil quite dark and helps to make the coloured stem border stand out better. This winter garden has Cornus, Leycesterias and Kerrias and is underplanted with drifts of crocus species, and snowdrops for February colour to be followed by tulips in May at which time the shrubs will be pruned down to the ground.
Roses start early with a warmer climate in Scotland, so pruning which used to be a March task now is better done in January.
I keep two compost heaps going so one has now been used and the other has been turned over to allow better rotting down of material. It should be ready for spreading in late spring.

Winter planting
I have been in the fruit garden digging out old redcurrent and blackcurrent bushes, manured and dug over the ground, which now gets planted with a batch of nine blueberries grown from seed saved from some berries purchased for eating several years ago. It will be interesting to see how they perform. The ground was previously prepared with leafmould dug in and a generous sprinkling of sulphur chips to acidify the ground. To help this acidification the plants will only get fertilised with sulphate of ammonia and sulphate of potash, both of which will help keep to heep the pH levels on the acid side.

Allotment planting
I also grow the Scottish Blaeberries, Vaccinium myrtillus on a prepared patch in my allotment fruit garden. These plants were also grown from seed collected when blaeberry picking on Alyth Hill several years ago. These blaeberry fruit can be as large as the highbush blueberries when given good growing
conditions, though the bushes only grow about a foot
tall.

Back in the Studio
Snow showers has got me back indoors at the easel.
I have pulled out a few still life paintings that I was unhappy with and decided to rejuvenate them. It was mainly the backgrounds that let then down, so they have now been repainted.
My art classes have started for the winter session finishing just before Easter, and I am now looking for those interested in an outdoor art holiday workshop painting the Scottish mountains, glens and
lochs based at the Four Seasons Hotel at St. Fillans on the banks of Loch Earn.
To enrol see information at Paint Scottish Lochs and Glens

First Spring Flowers
Although it is still mid winter by the calendar, the spring bulbs are now coming into flower. aconites, snowdrops and hellebores have not been detered by the snowfall or frost and are now
looking for attention.

The end of the year

It is time to review the past year in both the art world as well as in the garden to allow plans to be made for 2009.

My painting projects started of with snow scenes around Glenshee in Scotland, then warmed up with figure studies, (Scottish lady) in burnt umber and sienna tones, (my coffee and cream series), a trip to Islay during the whisky festival to put me in the right spirit, produced some Scottish landscape watercolours, then a trip to Benidorm completed the last project in a Scottish colourist style where vibrant colours predominate.
I still have to see what new projects will appear in 2009.

Outside the studio lot of time was spent in the garden and allotment battling to grow crops in a very wet year.
However efforts were rewarded with success on the allotment getting a cup for the best allotment in Dundee in 2008. I put it down to hard work eliminating pests, diseases and weeds, good feeding of all crops and growing the more exotic plants that may be successful should the climate changes give Scotland warmer weather.

Hence I am trying a range of grape vines to see if they will fruit in Dundee. Most promising so far is Flame a red seedless variety. The fig tree is also very happy and rewarded us with about 10 juicy figs. It is only in its second year. Modern varieties of raspberries and strawberries have allowed cropping to continue from early summer to the end of October.

However pride of place goes to our Saskatoons which are now cropping very well. This new fruit crop is mainly grown in Canada and north America, but is very suitable for UK. It is like a blueberry, but with a heavier yield and far easier to grow as it likes most soils.