Who needs a hand model?

A dear friend of mine is starting a business in London importing fine jewelery and housewares from South America. As a start-up, a professional photo shoot with a hand model was out of the question. So I volunteered to help.

I am a big fan of these rings. They offer the right amount of ‘bling’ and sophistication but are not plastic, and that is a unique selling point in this age of Topshop and Accessorize. I was inspired by their natural elegance, and so of course the gardener in me decided to use nature as a prop.

I hope she likes the photo shoot. If you stumble across this post and love these rings as much as I do or would like to see the full shoot, drop me a note and I will put you in touch with her. They are semi-precious stones and I believe will retail around £100.

Spring flower arrangements

Perhaps arrangement is too strong a word, and I should say ‘branches in a vase’. I love to take long flowering branches and make dramatic displays. Here are a few recent ones.

Magnolia stellata. It only lasted a weekend but looked great, if a bit white wedding, especially with the glass tea light holders.

These yellow flowers grow 7 feet high in our garden. I am not fond of yellow, although I like the height and ethereal nature of these.

Spring blossom in tiny vases decorate the dining table.

Ornamental quince give a more Japanese look.

Straightening a tree

Last October I took this photo because I love the drama you get in Autumn. I have always been keen to use this window as a frame for a special outdoor sculpture, but until RB and I win the lottery and can afford a Giacometti, Antony Gormley or similar, I will have to work with what nature gave us.

I decided this tree could do with straightening and tidying up to become more of a specimen, something to provide foreground interest without overly obscuring the background. Here is the tree this morning after a bit of work:

I am a fan of tidy tree trunks, which is what always strikes me when I go to parks and professionally landscaped gardens. I removed the spindly branches from the bottom all the way up to them main canopy of this small tree, and then simply used a support to get it to sit relatively vertical. Although it isn’t quite straight, I am hoping its shape will improve over time. More importantly it has provided a sculptural subject for the window, and I’m pleased with that.