Garfield Park's Sunken Garden, 2022

One of the things I enjoyed doing in my latter years living a half-block from Garfield Park for so many years was photo-documenting the annual floral displays in the park's Sunken Garden.

When I was in Indy last month, I swung by the Sunken Garden, and wouldn't you know it ... access was blocked because of some kind of excavation work going on inside the garden.

So if the qualify of the iPhone 13 Pro images you see in this post strike you as underwhelming (and most of them are), it's because they all were shot from outside the garden fences. Certainly not ideal, but I knew I'd not get another chance yet this year. 

As always, to view a larger, sharper version of an image, simply click on it. This is particularly helpful if you are accessing the block from a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, click on the link in this sentence. 

Tomorrow I'll present images that I took the same day in Blake's Garden, which is small development adjacent to the nearby conservatory (seen in the first picture below) and an enhanced version of the former children's garden that used to be on the site. Blake's Garden is designed as an interactive experience for children and families.  

 

2017 floral display one of the best ever in Garfield Park's Sunken Garden

As compositions go, one near-constant subject of my photography since acquiring my first digital single-lens reflex camera in 2004 has been the annual floral displays in the Garfield Park Sunken Garden in Indianapolis. On the first Friday of this month, I captured the 2017 display, which I feel is one of most striking the garden has featured in quite a few years.

A couple months ago, when the garden staff was preparing the beds for the summer display, I asked what would be going in. I didn't recognize most of the flowers the staffer told me. Fortunately, I dropped the conservatory a note through its Facebook page on Monday, and they told me the following:

"There are many flowers in the gardens this year. The fuschia colored flowers are gomphrena, or vinca. The orange flowers could be zinnia, lantana or sunpatiens. The yellow flowers are rudbeckia (sunflowers/black-eyed susans) or zinnia. We do have one salmon-color impatiens out there as well as coleus, which is on the greener side."

The conservatory didn't mention the arrangements by the flagpoles at the south entrance, but the predominance of those are purple and yellow cone flowers.

One thing I know for sure is that this year's displays are very impressive, showy and cheerful. Which is why I chose to use an overview shot of the garden for my photo to lead off the post. I understand that some shooters might say there is a lot of wasted space in the foreground of the image, but I feel that to appreciate the garden, the floral display and its full character, which in my opinion includes the paved walkway, you need to see at least one photograph integrating that space.

On the left side of the image behind a lamppost, you'll notice a white trellis, which I've often seen in the garden in my many visits through the years. It is used for couples in weddings that are held on the grounds. And on this day, near the end of my shoot, a couple showed up in their wedding-day attire accompanied by a photographer. I presumed they were either taking the bridge and groom formal shots that day, or simply taking a few test shots so they knew what they'd be up against the next day.

Interestingly, a youth group -- I'd estimate about 18 teens -- appeared at almost the same time. They, too, got into a couple of my photos.

For a full gallery of images from this shoot, visit my site at SmugMug.com.

Photo geek stuff: I shot everything in this post with a Canon 6D equipped with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens and B+W polarizing filter. Exposures for every composition were bracketed into three -- one normal, one +2/3 and one -2/3. The three were melded into one in post-processing using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software.

Tulips a welcome, if brief, sign of spring

In years past, I've occasionally presented photos I'd taken in my home gardens of spring bulbs in bloom to help usher in spring. This year, I decided to show a few pictures of the tulip blooms from the Sunken Garden of nearby Garfield Park in Indy.

The park plants tulips for annual spring displays every year, then replaces them -- in the same beds -- with the annual summer show that usually lasts till September. On a designated date each spring, in that interim between spring and summer displays, conservatory staff invites the community to dig out and take home the tulip plants to make room for the summer show.

I've been in Garfield Park on more occasions than I can count, but since early February, I've been going there almost daily to walk as part of an exercise regimen that I hope will enable me to return to a thrice weekly running regimen, something I did for many, many years until about two years ago when I lapsed.

My walking route often puts me in the Sunken Garden, where I was on April 16 when I paused to take the pictures of the tulip display you see in this post, using my iPhone 6s Plus.

The blooms on the flowers that you see here have almost all blown away as of yesterday, but I present these as an annual reminder that spring is here ... and in recognition of how May 1, at least in prior years anyway, seemed to be the benchmark for prime tulip season. I found the combination of marbled orange-violet tulips, the solid-violets and marbled white-violets an interesting one. And then out of the blue, in only certain spots, there were a few solid pinks, too.

In the vertical stone planters situated along the garden overlook, conservatory staff planted burgundy and orange-yellow pansies, as seen in the very last photo below.

I am very familiar with the orange-violet blooms; I have some in my garden at home, pictures of which I've presented in posts in springs past. Sometimes I get frustrated with spring bulbs; their blooms don't last very long, and it seems forever before you get a chance to enjoy them again.

I mentioned this recently to a cousin of mine who is very enthusiastic about tulips. She reminded me that the reason she gets so excited is because tulips signal an end to winter (and/or the beginning of spring). I concurred, which softened my "frustration" somewhat. I didn't have the heart to remind her that it's not unprecedented (nor unusual) for an unforgiving frosty weather system to sweep through, often without much notice, and ... well, let's just say "change the landscape" of the tulips.