Sayen Gardens in Hamilton Square, New Jersey

I don't know if you are tired of flower pictures or if the blogosphere is too saturated with flower photo essays, but this blogpost began writing itself so I let it go on. This morning I dragged all of my camera gear to Sayen Gardens in Hamilton Square. (Sayen rhymes with lion.) This used to be the home and garden of Frederick and Anna Sayen whose family had a rubber plant nearby. The Sayens bought the thirty acres in 1912 and built the Arts & Crafts Style bungalow house there.

The 1912 Sayen House

The Sayen house features a "TB room." These rooms with windows on three sides, were commonly built a hundred years ago for convalescing tuberculosis patients. There's no record of anyone in the Sayen family suffering from this disease, however.

A sign of the time: the "Tuberculosis Room" at the Sayen House

Hamilton Township bought the estate in 1981 and turned it into a park. The house is used for weddings and other special occasions.each weekend in the nicer weather. I planned my photo shoot for a Saturday morning before the bridal invasion began. That is a better time for flower photography, anyway.

The gardens are maintained by the township and volunteers and are open to the public from dawn to dusk. On Mother's Day every year, Sayen Gardens plays host to a popular Azalea Festival, and every other weekend year 'round, the grounds are crawling with bridal parties posing for pretty pictures. Fifteen to twenty brides find their way here every weekend in the nicer weather.


Frederick and Anna Sayen were travelers and brought plant specimens home from all over the world. These days the park is known for its azaleas in all possible colors, some so tall they form archways over your head.

Kids, brides, and photographers seem to flock to the pond where the quaint footbridge and fountain pose for photos daily.

Superstorm Sandy came through here in the fall, and groundskeepers are still chopping up fallen tree trunks. I'm glad that is not my job. That root ball is as tall as I am.

And of course there are flowers everywhere.

Don't forget to look up!

Sayen Gardens is located at the corner of Mercer Street and Hughes Drive in Hamilton Square, NJ.

Longwood Gardens II: Every Flower's Got a Story

I suspect I get my love of flowers from my parents. They always had flowers in the gardens. My father enjoyed shooting photos of flowers, especially those he had grown himself. He experimented with light and filters and backgrounds. We have some nice dahlia photos of his, but most are in the form of slides. Perhaps I was channeling him at Longwood Gardens last week when I took about five hundred flower photos and spent quite a lot of hours sorting and cropping afterward. That's all I do--crop--I don't enhance my photos in any way. This post contains my favorite non-orchid flower photos.

That top photo is a gardenia. That was Mom's favorite flower. I don't remember her growing gardenias until my father passed away and one of her friends bought her a bush to cheer her up. It still thrives in Cape May, and is loaded with pink gardenias in mid-spring. The problem is, Mom loved white gardenias because she carried them when she got married in 1943. She didn't have a fancy white dress or professional photos to remember the day because it was wartime. She and my father were married in their uniforms, U.S. Coast Guard for him and Navy WAVES for her, and the white gardenias were the one luxury. There's now a white gardenia bush next to the pink one in Cape May, purchased in memory of her.

I do remember Mom growing roses. I have never had luck with roses (they practically die when I breathe on them), but Mom grew roses in many colors wherever we lived. Some of her salmon and pink ones still bloom in Cape May, but I don't get too close. I like this photo because I got the blurry background thing right.

Dad's favorite flower, besides dahlias, was the bird of paradise. I remember these growing on the porch of the Cape May house, but once we left Cape May for Staten Island, he turned over his plants to his friend Fred (a mechanic with a greenhouse) for safekeeping. This is my best bird of paradise shot from Longwood:

Generally, I favor hibiscus. Sometimes, I get them to grow and bloom in my own garden. Cape May is a whole different gardening zone from Hamilton, so I'd probably have more luck there except that I'm not there often enough to water them. But here's a nice shot from Longwood:

I pulled out my fish-eye lens to shoot the palm room. The window panes in the background and the palms themselves make a nice effect curved on the sides. There's another one like this that includes Fred (another mechanic, but without a greenhouse) holding my pocketbook. He doesn't like that one.
There's no story behind this shot except that I really like these flowers. I think it's the color. I have one garden beside my house that has almost exclusively this color blooms of different varieties with yellow flowers.

Finally, here's a vintage shot I took in May, 1977, of my parents at the Topiary Garden at Longwood Gardens. (This one I had to touch-up a little bit.)

Philadelphia Flower Show 2010

I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show Wednesday imagining the blissful afternoon I would spend flitting from one exhibit to another shooting inspired flower photos through Nikon glass. It would definitely be less crowded on a Wednesday than it is on the weekends, right? Wrong. After ninety minutes I had had enough of being pushed and nudged and hurried along, and I took my leave. The theme this year was "Passport to the World" and there were displays featuring New Zealand, Netherlands, South Africa, India, Brazil and Singapore. These, of course, were the most crowded of all.

I loved this elephant and stood there forever for this shot because some whiney brat's yellow smiley face balloon kept popping into the frame. anyway, look closely at the elephant's toes painted with sparkly nail polish. It's all in the details, right?

Lilies are always good for some good shots. Stick that camera right up in their faces:

There were many creative displays including this one with little globes of colored water suspended from the ceiling (or a frame, I don't remember) at different heights with assorted flora popping out.

I was surprised to see figs in portable pots. These are the same variety we've been growing at the Cape May house for longer than I have been alive, Turkey Brown. They are green because they are not yet ripe, of course.

These are two of my favorite shots. Just flowers, nothing fancy.

I should add that the Marketplace was not as crowded as the exhibits and I spent some time there. I only bought a small Flowering Maple that I will try to keep alive until summer. If anyone is wondering what to get me for my upcoming birthday, I would like a Bagz-it, an Air Chair, a complete re-landscaping of my backyard, and a special keepsake DVD of the 2010 Flower Show so's I can see what I missed.

Queen Victoria Garden Tour

On Monday evening I attended the Garden Tour at the Queen Victoria Bed & Breakfast. I brought along the new camera just in case there were beautiful blooms, and there were. Most of the flowers and greenery were familiar, but I saw some unusual speimens. The free booklet guide helped identify them by garden location, and will be handy when I get around to labeling my photos. The self-guided tour took about an hour and covered not only the Queen Victoria, but some other properties nearby.

Look at this shot of crepe myrtle buds with the blurry blooms and Victorian window in the background. I'm not saying how long it took me to learn how to do this!

.

Afterwards, I took advantage of the early evening light and took some new photos of Cape May's Victorian architecture and the beach. Lots of people were walking around even though it was a Monday evening. There were strollers everywhere, and although they tried, none ran me over. Here's a whale watch boat and lifeguard stand. I'm standing on the Promenade to take this.