Photographs: Flowers and Gardens

On a July 4th trip to Brandon, Vermont I happened upon this charming patriotic garden display of day lily flowers growing around an antique chair decorated with flags. I like to create this style of whimsical garden decor in my yard with recycled furniture and found objects.

I love nature and gardening,and spend a lot of time taking flower photographs in my backyard wildlife habitat and around my rain garden. Photography, painting and landscaping are a few of my passions, so I try to get outdoors every day to take photographs of my flower gardens - even in the winter. My camera is always nearby, especially when I travel. I'm fond of beautiful flowers and colorful foliage, whether they're in a garden, at a park or conservatory, or part of the decor for a special event.

Although I love gardening and spend many hours digging in the soil and taking pictures of flowers and plants, I'm neither a fussy gardener nor a professional photographer. I just know what I like, and I'm happy to share my plants and garden pictures with everyone. I often use my garden photos and live plants as gifts or inspiration for an original painting or digital artwork.

I have a 3 year old planting of these buttery yellow day lily plants in my rock garden. They are easy to grow, multiply readily, and often will rebloom if you remove the spent blossoms. Butterflies and other pollinators love these cheery yellow day lily flowers.

Hawkweed can be an invasive species. It shows up in gardens, meadows and city scapes and can completely take over your garden if you don't control or remove it. I liked the way it looked when it showed up as a complement to the purple-flowered sage, but I dug it out and removed the plant before it went to seed in order to protect my herbs and flowers from conquest.

This beautiful iris features flower petals that appear to be paint-splashed. This variety attracted my attention because the white speckles on the purple flower petals reminded me of paint spatters.

Heat-loving and drought tolerant yellow primroses flourish alongside wooly-leaved lambs' ears in a hot section of my southern Pennsylvania flower garden.

The butterfly bushes in my garden grow taller than 8 feet high every year. They're filled with fragrant little purple and pink flowers that butterflies cannot resist. Sometimes the bushes host up to a dozen butterflies at one time, sipping nectar while posing for flower pictures.

Columbine flowers come in many varieties, sizes and colors. This clear blue columbine is one of my favorites.

The blue pouchy blossoms of the false indigo flower are absolutely beautiful in spring gardens.

One of the easiest annual flowers to grow is also one of the most brilliantly colored. These marigolds grew from seed dropped by the flowers in my garden from a previous year. The plants grew to over 4 feet tall, and were covered with gold, yellow and mahogany flowers.

I have adored big bold bleeding hearts since I was a child and they grew all over my grandparents tiny city garden.I have 3 different varieties of bleeding heart plants in my own garden and they self-seed so I am always giving new plants away as gifts.

I love to shop at the farm stands and flower markets in Vermont. Wood's Farm Market offers the healthiest and most beautiful flower, herb and vegetable plants I've found in the area. The shop is on Route 7, and this natural wetland is right next to the garden shop. I snapped this photo last summer at the edge of the pond near the rose garden at Woods, with the Green Mountains of Vermont in the background - Mother Nature is a wonderful gardener!