It seems like every spring, I spend a few days photographing daffodils and other members of the amaryllis family. This year I photographed wonderful daffodils at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia and at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland. I also photographed some Summer Snowflakes at Brookside Gardens.
Daffodils at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for spring. According to the calendar, spring arrived last week. But here in the DC area, I’m not sure Mother Nature has been paying attention. We had a warm February so we all thought it would be an early spring. And then March arrived with cold, rain, snow and wind.
So here it is, the last week in March and I’m still waiting for my daffodils to bloom. Maybe this will be the week it finally happens. While I’m still waiting for to feel like spring, I’ve put together a video with some of my favorite daffodil photographs to remind everyone (including me) just how wonderful they are. My photographs are accompanied by a Medley of Voices fo Spring Waltz by Johann Strauss.
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my new daffodils video.
I know – the daffodils finished blooming weeks ago here in the DC area – but I’m just now getting around to posting some daffodil photos I’ve recently edited. I hope you enjoy them 🙂
Geranium – a Tazetta Daffodil – and no – I have no clue why they named this daffodil geranium!!! When I’ve posted photos of these daffodils to Facebook people keep telling me they aren’t geraniums 🙂
It seems like every spring I end up doing a blog post on daffodils. Usually the post contains photos of the daffodils I photographed that year. And this year is no exception – here’s this year’s collection of daffodil photos. Everything is blooming early this year in the Washington DC area – including the daffodils. I first photographed them in early February this year – and now at the end of March – they are pretty much done blooming.
Late last week I spent several wonderful hours photographing at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia. Green Spring Gardens is a wonderful public garden in Fairfax County. Located at 4603 Green Spring Road, the gardens are open year round with free admission. In addition to formal gardens, there is a wooded stream valley and a native plant gardens. The native plant gardens are one of my favorite parts of Green Spring Gardens to spend time in. Not only are there a great variety of native plants in the garden, but many have identification signs, which makes it much easier to figure out what I’ve photographed.
This was my first visit to Green Spring Gardens this year – and it was just a couple of days after I visited Brookside Gardens. There were significant differences between what was in bloom between the two gardens – a few warm days and a slightly difference climate make all the difference in the world.
The first set of flowers I photographed were a variety of reticulated irises called Natasha. They are a pale flower with blue stripes and a striking yellow patch.
(c) 2010 Patty Hankins
I also found some wonderful daffodils to photograph.
(c) 2010 Patty Hankins
And some pansies. I was happy to find some pansies in good shape to photograph – it’s been a tough winter and many of the pansies that wintered over aren’t looking very good.
(c) 2010 Patty Hankins
The big surprise was discovering a rhodedendron already in bloom. The Korean Rhododendron (Rhododendron mucronulatum) is a early flowering rhododendron that adds a great splash of pink to a garden in the spring.
(c) 2010 Patty Hankins
And finally – I found some crocuses to photograph! When I first arrived at Green Spring Gardens that morning, the crocuses weren’t open yet. After a couple of hours – they were absolutely wonderful. This patch of purple and white crocuses were my favorites.
(c) 2010 Patty Hankins
It’s so nice to be photographing flowers outdoors again – while I love seeing them in conservatories in the winter – I’m really much happier photographing outdoors.
