One of my favorite garden blogs is Gardening Gone Wild, which focuses on the two topics that are right up my alley: garden design and photography.
This outstanding blog is a group venture that began with garden writers Fran Sorin (Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening) and Nan Ondra (Grasses: Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design and The Perennial Care Manual) in July 2007.
They were eventually joined by award-winning photographer Saxon Holt, and writer/photographer Steve Silk, a former editor at Fine Gardening, and Timber Press author, Debra Lee Baldwin (Designing with Succulents). A roster of regular guest contributors rounds out the talent list. As Garden Ranter Susan Harris, puts it: “They’re all accomplished heavy-hitters of the gardening world.”
Two popular features at Gardening Gone Wild are the Garden Bloggers Design Workshop which invites bloggers to write posts on a variety of topics, such as wildlife in the garden or the garden in the fall, and their “Picture This” photo contest.
The September 2009 photo contest invites contributors to capture the beauty of ornamental grasses. Inspiration and rules are here. You can enter one picture (post it on your blog, and then link to the contest post).
Ornamental grasses in the winter
Ornamental grasses are among my favorite plants, so I had to enter. It was difficult to choose just one photo from my garden, but here it is. I wanted to show just how beautiful ornamental grasses can be in the snow. We get winter interest in spades!
Sept. 27 contest update: My picture earned a silver award. Thanks! It was fun to particpate. See all the ornamental grasses Picture This winners here.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Your photo is wonderful, with the sky so blue, setting off the soft tans of the grasses and whiteness of the snow. Brr!
@ Mr. McGregor’s Daughter: Can you tell that I actually like winter? Cheers/Yvonne
Hi Yvonne. This is great. I’ve been so busy lately but hope to get back on track. Maybe I’ll add a photo to the contest! No snow in mine!!
Good luck!
Hi Yvonne, I do like winter too (to a certain extent, not 5-6 months no stop). Your ornamental grass photo is beautiful, I love the light in winter and the shadows in the snow. GGW is also one of my favourite blogs.
What a great picture. It captures the essence of what makes ornamental grasses such a great thing — the winter interest they provide. This picture makes me want to put the first footprints on that path past the tall grasses, and find out what is on the other side.
The grasses are beautiful under a blanket of snow! We rarely see snow in Austin, but like you, I’m a big fan of grasses too.
Gorgeous, Yvonne! This picture depicts just one of the reasons we northerners grow ornamental grasses. Do I dare say we are fortunate to have snow to show off the plumes? I don’t care for winter at all, but I love this image. Good luck!
Hey Yvonne!
I followed your journey to this new blogspot. Have loved looking at all your photos, and this one is no exception. I made up a Grasses Gallery and if I can figure out how to do it (since I don’t really “link back” on my website…??), I’ll enter one of the shots in the Grasses contest.
Hope you’re well — what a fab September we’ve had!
Janet
Welcome Janet. How nice to hear from you again. Indeed, it is hard to link to particular images in a flash-based site. One way around that is to incorporate a blog into your site where you could have individual pages that have linkable urls. I’m no techie, but there are people who can set that up for you.
Yvonne –
I did a link back to the photo contest from the appropriate page in my Web Photo “Grasses” Gallery.
Re Flash, only my home page is Flash-based and, believe me, that required a certain tech-friendly son to help. The rest of the site I can do myself as long as I don’t let too much time pass because even FrontPage befuddles me if I don’t stick with it. Maybe a blog….some day…
Your photos are just lovely!
Soooo pretty! I love the snow on the spent grasses. We don’t have snow here in Florida so it is always intriguing to me to imagine what it must be like to garden where it snows. You have captured such a beautiful essence of the grasses in winter in your garden. Very nice. Good luck on the contest.
Meems @ Hoe and Shovel
I’m so impressed, the grass and blue sky contrasting with snow makes a beautiful photograph!
this is a beautiful photo of grass in the winter. i love it when the snow blankets the garden.
happy september.
Welcome Meems, Linda and Marmee: Thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll be back.
Yvonne, that is an exquisite combination of colours and the contrast of the bare tree and the fluffy grasses is perfect.
Thanks, Joco, that’s exactly what appeals to me about this picture. Cheers/Y
Hi Yvonne, Congrats on your Silver Medal for the picture.
Lene