With all this talk of birthdays, I tohought I'd post this notice of a re-birth! Well, a re-vamp! of John Lonsdale's site.... this message from John.....
"Happy New Year!
This note is to let you know that I’ve updated the Edgewood Gardens web site (
http://www.edgewoodgardens.net) – adding nearly 1250 new photos and removing quite a few that have been superseded.
You’ll notice a slight change in format – due to the switch in 2009 to a Canon EOS50D camera which takes pictures in the standard SLR 3:2 aspect. I’ve also bumped up the image dimensions by about 25%; this definitely improves presentation and shouldn’t make too much of a hit on file size for download. I used Adobe Lightroom for most of the image manipulations – take a look at it if you don’t know it; it greatly simplifies the workflow and ease of optimizing images.
Plants can be seen at
http://www.edgewoodgardens.net/Plants_album/index.html and general garden views and the family cats are at
http://www.edgewoodgardens.net/Garden_album/index.html. You can choose to view just the updated images, or find them amongst all the others, arranged by family or season.
Nearly half the photos are of garden views taken in spring and summer 2009, the remainder is plant portraits. A few things seem to have caught my eye especially this year. Dracunculus vulgaris has increased rapidly; the flowers were left alone by the birds of prey, the stench was amazing and no amount of Viagra could bring it back once it was all over (
http://tiny.cc/GiNUu). The native lilies, Lilium superbum and Lilium canadense, put on a great display and the former topped out at nearly 9 feet tall (
http://tiny.cc/sqeUm). My love of Phlox continues to grow, and Phlox divaricata and stolonifera were incredible in April (
http://tiny.cc/eiFEO); Phlox divaricata has seeded all over the garden in a multitude of colors and flower shapes, and the scent is amazing on a warm day. I’ve added many more Trillium images (
http://tiny.cc/tp8gc), and take a look at Rhododendron prunifolium (
http://tiny.cc/qMbY1) and Edgeworthia chrysantha (
http://tiny.cc/Gvoj2). The Edgeworthia seems to be hardy here, the winter damage becomes less each additional year the plants are in the ground; they look really neat all winter, the flowers are gorgeous and the scent is amazing. R. prunifolium doesn’t flower until late summer; all it is missing is the scent of the earlier flowering eastern species. I can’t stop taking photos of the Pulsatillas (
http://tiny.cc/fRHop), Penstemon murrayanus (
http://tiny.cc/3k6mT) and hellebores, which were spared by the weather this year, unlike two years ago (
http://tiny.cc/6vcV8). I’m finding more hardy Crocosmias (
http://tiny.cc/Si0g8), which add color to the garden in summer and are humming bird magnets. The Oncocyclus irises, I. bostrensis and I. camillae flowered for the first time (
http://tiny.cc/Uqfvm). One last favorite – take a look at the ‘orange’ form of Claytonia virginica (
http://tiny.cc/nIAms ), which came to me courtesy of John Gyer.
All of the above links are to pictures in the ‘Latest Additions’ albums – the same photos, and more, are in the full garden and plants image albums.
I’ll make a plug for the Safari web browser again – one of only two mainstream browsers that honor image’s embedded ICC profiles (sRGB in my case) and displays them (corrected through the computer's monitor profile) in the manner intended by the author. I love Safari and would strongly recommend it, both for this feature and the fact that it renders pages much faster (on my computers at least) than any other browser.
Anyway – please enjoy the images, feel free to drop me a note with any comments, and let me know the ID of any of the unidentified species.
Thanks and all the best,
J."
