After starting my blog up again, I said I’d share some of my garden photography back on here from over the years. It might have taken me over a year but here it is, nature and wildlife in the garden from 2012 onwards.
When I finally started choosing photos for this blog post, I ended up with over 180 in a maybe folder. Yes you did just read that right, one hundred and eighty – and that didn’t even include the edited photos I’d saved from my old blog posts! Now obviously I wasn’t going to need that many photos for a single post, so I whittled them down to a much more manageable amount… well, I say manageable but if you add up the photos overall including the ones in each collage, there’s still over 50 here.
I’d completely forgotten about that first photo until I went searching through my old photos. Now I’ve found it again, it’s definitely right up there as one of my all time favourite photos from the garden, it really gives me bluebell wood vibes.
This next one is from a couple of years ago, I love how the raindrops make spiderwebs look like they’re covered in tiny jewels. I actually shared a more recent photo of raindrops on a spiderweb over on my Instagram in this post a few weeks ago.
Blossom bush has been with us for around 7 or 8 years now, look how tiny it was back in 2017! Now it’s nearly as tall as our garden wall. It’s one of those plants that amazes me every year, from the beautiful blossom we get in spring to the colourful leaves in autumn. It makes wonderful photos in all seasons. The blossom bush is also in the background of the spiderweb photo above.
Now let’s talk about wildlife, over the years we have had a variety of wildlife visit our garden; hedgehogs, mice, bats, we even had a squirrel recently but I’ll save that for another time (I’ve kept all my photos from this year out of the post, since I’ll probably do a ‘24 round-up style post at the end of the year).
Many wild birds visit our garden too; blackbirds, wood pigeons, blue tits, sparrows, goldfinches… the list goes on, even a pheasant popped in once back in 2012!
One of the most magical moments I’ve ever had in the garden was in 2014. I was sat outside at the time and the blackbird (in the photo above) must have only just fledged the nest, or very recently at least. Next thing I knew this young blackbird was walking towards me across the lawn, I kept very still as it walked past, the mother was across the garden keeping watch but didn’t seem to mind. It was amazing to be out there at just the right moment.
Of course the rock on the bottom right isn’t part of any wildlife family but I wanted to include the photo somewhere. Whenever I dig in the garden, I’m always on the look out for unusual looking rocks and stones I might uncover to use as flowerbed decor, I love the detailing on this one.
The photos in the collage above are a select few of the many beautiful plants we’ve had over the years, brightening each season. From left to right – an iris, a pink rose, scabiosa, tulips, azalea, berberis and last but not least, the lovely pink cordyline.
Next up we have insects, or in the case of this blog post – insects part 1!
I find these small creatures so fascinating, I’m always rushing in to get my camera to get a quick photo when I’m out in the garden! I saved the pale tussock caterpillar from the garden bin one day, I was putting it out to be collected and saw it on the lid. The gooseberry bush might not have liked the sawfly but it certainly looks pretty. Other photos included above are of a moth, a butterfly, a woodlouse, a fly and a dragonfly.
These orange and purple flower photos were taken in 2018.
Fungi also pop up in our garden from time to time, last year we had a load of these mushrooms in the bottom right photo sprout up in a flowerbed all at the same time. The bottom left is from 2021 and has some growing against a plant pot I painted. The ones above them were in the lawn a couple of years ago.
One evening I was taking photos in the garden back in 2020 when this moth popped up on the wall.
This was actually a collage I made for an old blog post back in 2021 – those berries on the right, we always call that plant “bad hair day” because it grows out all over the place, the birds absolutely love the berries on it though. We’ve got several of them around the garden, they naturally seed themselves a lot here which is great (unless they decide on a really unsuitable place like between a paving slab and a brick wall. Not enough room for you there, berry plant).
Then there’s the painted lady butterfly on the pink buddleia – the bees and butterflies enjoy that one. There’s purple geranium to the left of that – geranium makes a great ground covering plant. Pink flower is above that and of course a female blackbird is in the centre of the photo.
More insect photos incoming…
Another moth (I’m not entirely sure which caterpillar this is – it could be a rusty tussock)? Then there’s the spider I managed to get a close-up photo of on a blade of grass. Also there’s a fly, another bumblebee, a slug that appeared to be sleeping in a flower and another dragonfly.
More flowers… I actually took the photo of the antirrhinum in the dark. The double hollyhock in the photo next to it started off such a tiny plant, no really, when it came home it was tiny, then… well, this happened. It started growing and just kept on growing until it was above the fence, it was amazing! The photo here doesn’t really do it justice how tall it got. Speaking of tall, our old conifer tree grew very tall over the years, look at it here reaching up towards the sky. Other photos in this collage include berries the birds enjoy in the top right and pink flowers including some more pink blossom.
I hope you’ve enjoyed travelling back through time in the garden with me as much as I did going through all of these photos.
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