The little trees on the lake, Wisleycoloured pencil in Daler Rowney sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell
I went to the RHS Garden at Wisley last Friday for the start of their Autumn Festival and National Fruit Show. Next to all the wonderful displays of apples and pears, they have lots of stalls with lovely tempting food. I resisted the charms of the slabs of organic chocolate with fruity bits at the Chocolate Alchemist but came away with a game pie, a bottle of Thai infused olive oil and stem ginger marmalade!copyright Katherine Tyrrell
Lest you think I only went for the food(!), I also took the opportunity to check out how the trees were doing in terms of changing colour. I don't know if it's my imagination or not but they seem to be staying greener and keeping leaves longer this year. I wonder if the deluge this summer has anything to do with that?
One of the lakes had five very small trees whose leaves had already turned and they looked quite odd amongst so much greenery. They are however going to make some fabulous artwork for my series on drawings of gardens when I work out sizes and crops from the photos and the sketch I did.
I also visited a really good exhibition of garden photography called "Gardens in Focus" in The Glasshouse Gallery. It finishes at the end of this month. When I see excellent work like that it always makes me want to go and spend a small fortune on a camera - before I remember just how heavy those cameras are to carry around! I've got a very nice new small rucksack which takes all my art kit plus new addition of a portfolio for loose paper much more easily than my 'old' small one and I'm not looking to add in yet more things to carry just yet!
Wisley has various helpful sections on the RHS website about what is happening in different months of the year (see below for links). I haven't spotted the RHS Garden - Wisley blog before - that's new to me. They explain in Painting with Apples how they produced the splendid garden mural which I photographed. It's produced entirely from different varieties of apples. Note the age of the designer!
This week the Fruit Department are painting…. with apples. For the last few years we’ve held a competition with schools to come up with a design that can be ‘painted’ using the restricted colour palette of apples. I’m always amazed by the imagination of children and the astonishing variety of ideas they come up with. This year’s winning design of a tractor is by 8 year old Jodie Francis from St Barnabas School, Market Lavington, near Devizes in Wiltshire.Links:
RHS Garden Wisley - Painting with Apples
Lovely little drawing. I must get out there and sketch those autumn colours! I had to spend last weekend gardening. Grrr.
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