Calendar competition winner Sheila Averbuch loves gardening and photography
|
| Snowdrops in wood: Taken with a Samsung D900 Cameraphone on February 20, 2007 in Whitekirk, East Lothian: 'How I wish I'd had my Fuji with me that day'...
|
'There's nothing to beat those few minutes in the garden before I start work – just me, the dog and the dew.'
|
| Sheila with one of her 'wee ones'
|
Sheila Averbuch of Pencaitland, East Lothian in Scotland is one of our 13 Gardening.co.uk
Calendar Competition winners with her
Crocus shot for February.
'I began gardening in earnest when my husband and I relocated from Ireland to a 400-year-old cottage outside Edinburgh back in 2003,' says Sheila. 'We heard it had once been a lovely garden but, before we arrived, 60 tonnes of earth had been removed from the back to make way for the modern extension, so I've started virtually from scratch.
Raised lawn and raised beds
'The extension created a raised lawn, which has been a nightmare to baby-proof, and two big raised beds that are great for garden photography. The beds make it easy to get nose-level with the flowers, like the early-spring
Crocus and the young
Helianthemum (both pictured), which flowered for the first time this summer and catches the afternoon light.
'If my family knew how much I thought about the garden – in my dreams I browse
|
| Crocus taken in Pencaitland with a Fujifilm FinePix S5000 on March 2, 2007
|
seed catalogues and have had detailed conversations with Alan Titschmarch – they'd probably be worried.
'Mothering our two wee ones (11 months and 2½ years) is a joy but, along with work, virtually every spare moment gets gobbled up, so I rely heavily on great performing bulbs and perennials, with a few over-achieving annuals for effect.
'My garden photography, all of which we put onto Flickr, is almost exclusively in the early morning on the two days the kids go to nursery. There's nothing to beat those few minutes in the garden before I start work – just me, the dog and the dew. And my new digital SLR with macro lens. Well, I don't have it yet, but surely my husband will pick up one of my hundred recent heavy hints!'
* See more of Sheila's photos in the
Mercat Cottage album.
*For more on Gardening.co.uk members and their gardens, see Related Articles at the bottom of this page.
denotes Subscriber-only content | Wednesday 23 July 2008 | Help | Glossary 
