Azalea Walk and Blue Poppies

Fortunately we made it to Dawyck today in time to capture the Azalea Walk before the flowers were past their flowering stage. This is a real highlight in the calendar of this botanical garden and definitely worth a visit as you can see above. It's a chance to see a very wide variety of different colours forming a fantastic harmony together. What with the exhibition etc. we almost missed it this year, some plants were already on the turn but there were plenty left to admire. The picture above is also a great illustration for the new theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site which is: Pathways! I'm thinking of the Journal Quilt I can make on that theme already.

Although the Azalea walk (despite the name it also features rhododendrons!) is a magnificent sight en masse, the individual plants are also a delight in their beautiful details, and I'm so pleased that the macro zoom on the Lumix captures it all in its very full glory.

Isn't this pink purely delicious! Although I have to say the purple one is a beauty too with the stained insides.

We were even more lucky today in that we didn't only catch the rhododendrons and azaleas before they finished flowering but most of the blue poppies were still in flower too. These poppies are very temperamental about where they chose to establish themselves. The environment has to be just so, and that's understandable considering they come from the Himalayas.

We have finally managed to persuade a couple to take root in our front garden but it will be some 10 years or more (if ever, in fact) before we have anything like the massive display of blue to be seen at certain areas in Dawyck Botanical Gardens. And yet, despite loving to see this with my eyes, when I use my camera I still prefer to take them on one at a time and then you can really observe them in their full glory including the gorgeous back of the flowers.