For better or worse we live in a culture of instant gratification and the expectation of immediate results. All too often we are too impatient to do the work required to generate truly meaningful change and growth. So it is with the usual moans and groans that I am greeted when I offer my foolproof method for achieving success and fulfillment photogaphing gardens: Keep doing it! The absolute best way to capture the true feeling of a garden is to visit it repeatedly at different times of the day and in all seasons. It makes sense after all, a garden is an organic palette, a man-made environment using natural growing materials. It is always changing, so it’s really quite impossible to capture any “best” image of a garden since the subject is in continuous flux. You have to capture it as it changes over time, to do it any justice.This lovely spot is at Pine Meadow Gardens in Southbury, CT, owned and designed by Wesley Rouse. I am in the midst of a four season photography project photographing this garden throughout the year, which is one of my favorite things to do in many gardens. One of the major attractions photography has always had for me has been to use it to document change over time, whether it be in the human form or in the landscape, whether man-made or not. The image above was captured in September. Here is the same view (different lens) made a few days ago. Winter garden photography is one of those rare niches in which there is little competition, but enormous rewards. Like other things it does require planning and thought. For instance it’s usually best done shortly after a fresh snowfall, so the snow has not yet fallen or been blown off the branches. Yet light is as ever, critical. Photographing when it is still cloudy will usually result in drab images. I am not one of those who thinks you can only create beautiful images in a garden in soft light, though there is some value in that (especially when doing plant portraits). I believe you need some dimension, some shading, which can only come from a direct light source. This is especially true in winter, with all that white! The snow does all kinds of things to your light, not the least of which is to bounce it all around. I learned from a ski photographer years ago to overexpose when shooting in snow – yes, that’s correct – overexpose. You have to fool your camera’s built in light meter, which wants to turn all the tonal values entering through the lens into an average medium gray. Do that and your white snow goes all gray and muddy and everything else in the image follows the snow down into darkness.  Hence the need to overexpose. But not too much. How much? You have to play with it. Perhaps as much as two full f-stops, but it depends on how much light you have and how your image is composed. More snow, more overexposure.This image did not need much overexposure due to the trees in the background and the arbor in front (I added some vignetting in Lightroom which darkens the arbor even more). Yet even this image was nonetheless overexposed by one-third of a stop).I happen to like moody, dark, contrasty images, even in pretty gardens. Shooting in winter gives me a bit more latitude to express my dark side. Yet in order to keep the image properly exposed and capture the detail of the plant against the snow covered hedge in the background, this image was overexposed by a full f-stop. Go figure! Then go shoot!

I admit, blogging is perhaps the last place one should try to hide one’s foibles & inabilities. Two years ago at Christmas I posted what was promised to be the first of a series of animal photo based posts, with a bunch of dog photos. Then I followed it up with…….nada. Zilch. Lots of farmers & gardens. Farms and gardens, where I meet plenty of great animals which I photograph. Have I posted any pics?

Nah! My bad.

So since it started as a Christmas post with lots of beautiful pups, I figured I could make it up by starting anew with the same theme because, (speaking as a hopeless dog lover who can NEVER get enough doggie love) who doesn’t love dogs? Seriously, who could resist Millie (the French Bulldog below)?With a face like that, you have to be a lover! And she is so affectionate. Yes, it’s an iphone photo, proving yet again that the best camera is the one you have at hand. So meet some of my canine friends:

This photo bomb is Dash, a Portuguese Water dog who lets Maria Nation garden in his yard.. Maria’s garden was featured in Great Gardens of the Berkshires (my 2008 opus) and has been in many magazines, as well as the cover of the Garden Conservancy’s summer open gardens guide a few years back.

This happy fellow lives at the Wilson Botanic Garden in Costa Rica. He was my tour guide and companion for the better part of an afternoon as I found my way around the grounds there, with his able assistance. Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! This year, especially after recent events and the ongoing nonsense in our political arena, take a hint from our furry, four-legged friends. Smile, wag and be as helpful as you can be. Love lots, snuggle when you can, don’t worry about little embarrassing things and give kisses at every appropriate opportunity. Here’s my sweet love, Ruby, be-ribboned for our home’s holiday enjoyment and I hope, yours too. Be safe and have a great holiday.

Last week I was the fortunate recipient/subject of a wonderful write-up in the local Litchfield County Times by the incomparable Tovah Martin. Tovah is one of the more prolific, not to mention gifted garden writers around. Truly she is really a fantastic writer. She is very much in demand as a speaker also, and for good reason. She is charming, smart, (brilliant actually), very entertaining and quite knowledgable about all things garden related. Her piece about me was a new angle on what to give the gardener in your life for the holidays, with the answer being either professional photography of their garden (in the form of either a framed print of digital files) or private garden photography lessons, from who else but a professional garden photographer who also does plenty of teaching. We happen to know someone who fits the bill….Click here to read the article.

Tovah Martin posing with the Momix dance troupe

I love this shot of her with the MOMIX modern dance company which I made on location in a field of ten thousand sunflowers cultivated by the company’s founder and artistic director, Moses Pendleton. We were doing a story on Moses and his sunflowers for Country Gardens magazine, literally the day before Hurricane Irene knocked them all down. I have been lucky enough to work with Tovah a number of times, and it is always a dream assignment. First of all, she is a master stylist; she can dress up a garden, a room, a set, any space, with panache and beauty to match any designer. It’s her secret weapon and one she wields effectively. Second, she just knows so much!! I learn not something, but many things every time I work with her. Sometimes it’s about the plants, sometimes it’s about the industry, but it’s always something useful and fascinating. Most important, she is just so wonderful to be with, she is so pleasant and funny and like the famous tv commercial rabbit, she just keeps on going & going….

We are truly blessed to live in a part of the country that has perhaps the densest concentration of really fine high level gardens in the world, certainly in this country. Northwest Connecticut, who knew? The Litchfield hills are the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains which run along the western border of Massachusetts and New York State. Our corner of this odd little rectangular state known mostly for pizza and mega-rich gold coast commuters is a gardener’s heaven climate-wise as well as people-wise. We have so many great gardens, garden writers and garden designers it’s almost embarrassing.  But the crown that sits above it all is Hollister House, George Schoellkopf’s superlative creation around the 18th-century home he has inhabited for several decades. The parterre garden (The ‘Gray Garden’, officially) seen above is what most visitors first encounter as they walk around the front of the house from the sign in area in the parking lot to enter the garden. This next image is how it looks as you step a little further in, and you drink in the panorama of George’s creation. (Granted, the first image was made in June & the one below in August, so the plant succession has changed, but you get the idea.)

“A classic garden in the English manner…informally planted in generous abundance” is how George describes his garden.  Considering the wealth of plant material, the breadth of the variety and the wonder of the landscape, this garden is for me most impressive for the peaceful, relaxing effect it has on its visitors. Certainly whenever I visit all cares and stresses melt away. It seems to have the same effect on everyone else I have been there with, and I am fortunate to get there plenty.Hollister House is one of the select few American gardens which the Garden Conservancy has noted for preservation.  Stephen Orr, the Garden Editor for Martha Stewart Living, and noted writer about gardens, called Hollister House “One of the best private gardens in the United States” recently at the third biennial Hollister House Garden Study Weekend, a three day orgy of gardening with a symposium (imagine the likes of Page Dickey, Marco Polo Stefano, Edwina von Gall, William Cullina and Bill Thomas, among others, as your speakers for one day!), open garden tours, a rare plant sale, and of course, plenty of freshly prepared local food. Come visit! If you live within an hour in any direction from New York City, or west of Boston, it is a day trip for you. You can combine it with other great local gardens on one of the many open days, or with other local attractions. If you live further away, there is plenty in this area and beyond to make the trip worthwhile. I look forward to seeing you there!

Join us January 5-12 for an amazing trip to Cuba focusing (pun intended) on photography. We will meet Cuban photographers, visit galleries and teach Cubans about our way of doing things while learning about theirs. We will see the gorgeous Havana architecture and meet many warm and open Cuban people. We will also visit the beautiful Vinales Valley, A UNESCO World Heritage Site and Cuban National Park. Most of our time will be spent in Havana.

Old Havana viewed from the Malecon

The light in Cuba is exquisite, suiting the generous spirit of its countrymen.  I will include instruction and we will review and critique images as the trip progresses. This is a unique opportunity!  Come see for yourself what others only talk about. Travel to Cuba is legal; we will be traveling under a “people-to-people” license issued by the US State Department. We will have a modern air conditioned coach bus for our ground transport accompanied by a knowledgeable Cuban guide. We will eat at some fantastic restaurants opened under new laws allowing private enterprise. We leave from and return to Miami.

It’s not too early to start planning so set aside January 5-12, 2013. For more information you can email me rich@richpomerantz.com, or contact the Center for Cuban Studies at 212-242-0559 and ask for David.

The entire notion of sustainability is based on the plain meaning of the word. Unlike words such as “environmental”, “organic”, or even “local”, the word “sustainable” is self-defining. Some folks are saying that it is becoming yet another of these words that get bandied about by all kinds of charlatans and therefore it is losing the impact of it’s true meaning, but I don’t agree. Sustainable can only mean one thing – that the thing you are applying it to is, well, sustainable – able to be sustained! Try to co-opt it, or use it for something else and it doesn’t work. It can’t be re-defined to mean something not sustainable (though some are certainly trying. Greenwashing has some extreme proponents).

So if you would like a really good example of a sustainable system, here is one for you to cast your eyeballs at, located in Lee, NH, about an hour north of Boston at Tuckaway Farm, the home of Cornell graduate and University of New Hampshire PHD candidate Dorn Cox. Dorn grew up on the farm bought by his parents in the 1970’s and returned there after a career in international agriculture and economics.

Dorn Cox at Tuckaway Farm

Dorn is working on a number of very cool things, like developing the best wheat & other grain crops for New England. Most people think all the wheat in the US can only be grown in the midwest, but once upon a time (up to the time of the Civil War) farmers in the northeast grew wheat along with many other crops. By the time the larger combine type mowers were invented, which would allow for economical grain farming anywhere, most wheat growing farms were established in the midwestern plains, and eastern farmers just did not contemplate going back to growing grains. Dorn has proven that grain can be grown profitably in the northeast; Local farms now working with Dorn are now selling flour at competitive prices and he is testing different grass types to refine his economic models further.

Field of new varieties of spring wheat, early in the season

But the wheat is not the thing that brings up the sustainability issue.  The more exciting thing he is doing is his development of a seed-to-biofuel plan, in which he grows oilseed plants (like sunflowers & canola), refines the oil right on the farm in a mobile refining system he designed and built to create fuel that he then uses on the farm to run his tractors and other equipment. It’s an entirely self-sustaining and self supporting system, which happens to also be on wheels so he can transport it to other area farms to allow other farmers to utilize the same economies to refine their own fuels.

Here’s how it works: He grows the crop, let’s say sunflowers. He has figured out that four acres of sunflowers will yield 300 gallons of fuel at a cost of approximately $1 per gallon to produce. He presses the seeds for their oil while tilling the fibrous plant material back into the soil. The solid by-product (cake) of the pressing is used for animal feed.  Nothing is wasted or thrown away! The oil is refined through a multi-step process in a repurposed soda distributor’s panel truck, whose compartments afford the perfect set-up for the multiple refining tanks. The fuel moves from tank to tank by way of compressed air, so no emissions are created in the refining process. It is totally self-contained. Dorn calculates that his biodiesel gives back 3 to 5 times more energy than it takes to create it.

Former coca-cola distribution trailer converted into a biofuel refinery

So what Dorn is doing goes beyond mere plain vanilla sustainability. Basically sustainability is frequently seen as a benign, “do no harm” attitude, laudable certainly, and the basis for the positive notion of carbon-neutrality. But why be neutral?  We know we have taken too much carbon from our soil & pushed it out into the atmosphere through our heavy use of fossil fuels.  Maybe we need to consider reversing the direction of the trajectory we have become so used to. That’s Dorn’s philosophy, pushing the concept to another level, to actually take carbon out of the atmosphere and return it to the soil, using knowledge of plant biology coupled with environmental engineering with a healthy dose of agricultural economics. Dorn is a two-time USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service grant award winner and he is the founder and director of GreenStart, a non-profit whose mission is to share technology designed to promote healthy soil, food and energy. As if that isn’t enough use of his time, he also sits on his town’s energy committee, founded the Great Bay Grain Cooperative and is on the board of the New England Farmer’s Union. He won the New Hampshire Farm Bureau’s Young Farmer Achievement award a few years back. And he works his farm too!

There is a jewel of a garden in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

I first visited the 250 acre Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG) in the fall of 2007, shortly after it opened. It was an impressive landscape then, although the plantings were young and scant. The plan was apparent with several garden areas radiating out from the visitor center.  The layout brings the visitor down through a rocky woodland path to the tidal shore woodland.  Moreover, the design incorporates a number of very beautiful and engaging environments; a meditation garden filled with large granite slabs from different parts of the state (so there is an educational and historical context), a woodland “fairy house village”, where children of all ages are invited to build tiny fairy homes, paths and even villages, out of the twigs and brush found at the site, and the hillside garden through which the path winds.  The path has several sitting areas and places to slow down and enjoy the space, so it’s not just a transition area between the main gardens at the top of the hill and the areas below near the water, but is an integral part of the garden experience.

I revisited the CMBG this week to conduct a garden photography workshop. The transformation of this garden in just four and a half years is amazing! The gardens are lush and brilliant, and the support facilities are beautiful. There is a visitor center with a cafe serving delicious food and a state of the art education building. There is much more than 5 years of work evident here; planning began in 1991, a full sixteen years before it formally opened.

Shown above is the Lerner Garden of the Five Senses, which contains plants, water and hardscape which engage all five of the senses, in addition to being a wonderland.  It’s a really spectacular looking garden, very well laid out and approachable. It is one of the gardens found near the visitor center. Wander down the hill and be ready for some true charm. Fairies!

CMBG also boasts one of the most interesting children’s gardens I have seen, with themes derived from children’s literature by authors with a Maine connection, there are cute (green-roofed) houses, plantings, water, story areas, a “bear cave” and plenty of climbing opportunities.

Fun allium display at entrance to children's garden

The biggest surprise for me was that in the second week of June, the summer season had barely begun in this resort town known for it’s wonderful summer seafood-sated escapes. The town defines Maine cuteness, and is filled with seafood restaurants. You can even go out on a lobster boat to experience the fishing in a kind of eco-tourism-meets-Americana fantasy.  The temperature barely got to 70 degrees, the evenings required pants & a light jacket. We were blessed by a nice day with slightly overcast skies, not too bland overcast but not bright blasting sunshine either.  This light allowed some dimension, some shadowing, (I could have used a little more, frankly), but not so much contrast as on a bright sunny day.

mountain laurels along the upper part of the Haney hillside garden

The executive director is Bill Cullina, well known in the horticultural world for his expertise on native plants (a very hot topic these days – Bill is a sought after speaker). Bill was the director of horticulture there before becoming the executive director last year. He’s also an accomplished photographer and the author of several books, including one on native plants and one on perennials.

If you are able to make the trip to Maine, I recommend you make sure you have a day to take in the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. You can absorb it in one day. Take a look at their website, mainegardens.org to find out about their programs. I hope to return for another workshop in a year or two, but in the meantime there are plenty of great programs being offered for adults and children. They also have a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program where participants can share in the crop harvest from the CMBG’s vegetable garden.

weeping trees & plantings along the path in the Haney hillside garden

Workshop participant in Hollister House garden, Washington, CT

The past few weeks have been filled with workshops, from NYC’s High Line to Massachusetts Horticulture Society’s beautiful Elm Bank campus in Wellesley, MA, back to two more here in CT, and those followed the international trips recently posted about. My head is spinning! I have more to look forward to; I am really psyched about this coming Tuesday at the premier peony grower Peony’s Envy in Bernardsville, NJ. That workshop is almost filled to capacity.

Our next workshop is at Peony's Envy in NJ

After that coming up in June is another at the High Line on June 2, this time through the auspices of the NY Botanical Garden, followed by one “down east” at the Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay, which I visited the first the year it opened and then again a few years ago. The changes there have been dramatic, so I am really excited to lead a workshop there on June 12. Then I’ll be helping people interpret the Monet’s Garden exhibit at NYBG on June 14.

Hot off the presses and here to crow about is a piece I photographed last year at a wonderful writer’s garden in West Stockbridge, MA that appeared in the current issue of Design New England, written by the wonderful Tovah Martin. (The opening spread shown above is a scan right out of the magazine, hence the ‘gutter’ between the pages shows in the center)The cool thing about this garden is first, that it had never been photographed professionally until the gardener asked me to come see it about three years ago. I started visiting and shooting there, then I brought Tovah to see it & she fell head over heels in love with the garden and just as much with Marian, the gardener, and Carol, the owner, who worked together for years to develop their vision of this garden.  The result is beautifully displayed in the magazine; Kudos tho Design New England!

I don’t typically just refer to someone else’s blog post, but the wonderful blog Gardening Gone Wild, (whose photo contest I had great fun judging last year) is a fantastic blog for gardening knowledge and information.  Their most recent post is worth sharing. It is run by some extremely competent folks – Writers Debra Lee Baldwin, Fran Sorin and Noel Kingsbury and photographer Saxon Holt. With firepower like that you can bet their blog packs a wallop. I just finished reading Fran’s interview with Debra Prinzing, author and creator with photographer David Perry of the superb new book, “The 50 Mile Bouquet”, a gorgeous project (yes, I am jealous!).  The book kind of picks up where Amy Stewart’s “Flower Confidential” finished, bringing the flower buying down to the local level and explaining who is doing local growing and most importantly, why that is such an important notion. Many people have bought into the idea of eating locally, or at least of being aware of where their food comes from, but few give any thought to where their flowers come from. In most cases, it’s a continent or an ocean away! Learn more and read the interview here.

If you want to read a blog post I did about Sunny Meadows Flower Farm run by a young couple for local consumption, click here.