The rain finally came this week. In the UK during the last month, it felt like we were a different country altogether, somewhere more continental, and the weather forecast continually surprised us. The unbroken warm sunshine had many up-sides, but I was sad to see the significant reduction in spring wildflowers in my local area. The heatwaves and dry conditions have also seen gardeners resorting to tap-water, which plants like much less.
Last year I captured an extraordinary wildflower meadow close to where I live. However, this year the same location was completely different - the ground underfoot so dry, with only a few bird’s-foot trefoil, and buttercups managing to break up the short, yellow grass.
Last year the wildflowers were much more abundant.
I’m optimistic, now the ground has been soaked again, that there will be an uptick in growth, and I will be venturing out to check on things in the next couple of weeks. The River Wye, which flows through my home town, has filled up a little, - it was noted on the BBC’s Springwatch programme this week, that it’s one of the cleanest rivers in Britain. A few years ago, I photographed the pebbles through the ripples and it was crystal clear. As a result of this water quality, the river’s eco-system is healthy - a good-news story to hold on to.
The last time I took a full day out with my camera was in April. I was out on one of the area’s well-known gritstone ‘edges’ formed over millions of years by geological forces. These landscapes are dear to me as I spent a lot of time exploring them with my family as a child; particularly redolent are the native birch trees that characterise these locations. I’ve called this image ‘Meeting of the Birches’ because, to me, it evokes an ancient gathering among the rocks.
When I’m out with my camera, I make a conscious effort to allow time to observe, listen and experience what is around me without the viewfinder in front of my eye. I admire the approach of the traditional Zen artist-poets (and they were both) whereby a scene or subject would be observed until the essence of it was felt to have been experienced. The artist would then go away and re-create the experience from memory creatively, through painting and poetry. The resulting artwork is a kind of meditation-memory, almost like taking hold of a dream and conjuring it up. I admire the respect of this approach - there is no sense of dominance or ownership of nature.
My new ‘Garden Zen Collection’ of garden floral images and haiku hopes to evoke something of this presence and respect. The beauty to be found in a scene where light is playing among the intricate forms and colours of flowers sometimes evokes a lost Eden or a glimpse of heaven, yet fleeting and all too brief - it’s that brevity that is acknowledged in the great sakura season in Japan. This season also encompasses the idea of renewal and hope. Again, the natural world helps us to focus our minds on what matters, creating anew and afresh in a way that is reassuring but, now more than ever, nature needs our help to be able to offer it’s age-old dependability for future generations.
Emma Clinton - May 2025