Quantcast
Channel: Ellen Ecker Ogden
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 31

New Heirloom Garden. Plant Families Photo Shoot

0
0

The recipes in my new book are organized by plant families. To say two plants are in the same family is not to say they are the same, yet they may share similar characteristics. It’s a way to help gardeners make sense of the plant world and provides a glimpse into how heirlooms evolved; what basic elements from each plants have been bred and enhanced to make them more durable, more nutritious, more beautiful, and disease resistant; and ultimately how to start your seeds, how to grow them in the garden, and what you need to know about saving the seeds.

Photographer Matthew Benson and I spent this past week at Philo Ridge Farm in Vermont to begin the process of gathering the photos for my New Heirloom Garden book. We started with the final chapter titled Plant Families, which we both agreed would be the most daunting, yet why not tackle the hard stuff first? The result were magnificent, and have set the tone for the rest of the book.

Learning to group plants into their families and genera necessitates learning a little Latin to help keep everything straight. Knowing more about how to identify a plant’s characteristics based on anatomical features, which might be the way they grow, the type of flowers, the shape of the stem, or the leaf structure, and whether they are annual, biennial, or perennial is a little easier to remember, and an ideal way to organize in the garden.

Thinking plant families for a photo shoot also requires making sure we could find enough examples of one type of plant, and lucky for us, plants are like (most) people: they enjoy the company of other “like” plants. Grouping similar plants in the garden together sets up a naturally complementary pairing, because often what grows together goes together at the table. Here’s Matthew at work, and examples of some of the results of this genius behind the camera.

Matthew Benson legume familyplant families allium family

The post New Heirloom Garden. Plant Families Photo Shoot appeared first on Ellen Ecker Ogden.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 31

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images