Wollam Gardens
In the summer of 2022, my daughter started working as a farmhand at Wollam Gardens, an 11 acre cut flower farm and arboretum. One sunny day she suggested I come along and draw flowers. I have gone back several times to this glorious flower destination in the Virginia’s Northern Piedmont countryside owned by Bob Wollam and managed by his son Ben and wife, Anne Montgomery.
In the fall of 2022, Anne hosted an En Plein Air event for local artists and invited me to come for a day of drawing or painting at the farm. Her plan was to display the work at an Art Show gala event in the Wollam Gardens pavilion. I chose to draw the late blooming white cosmos. It was my first '“art show”.
See my work at the 2023 En Plein Air Exhibition Gala.
Jeffersonton, VA
Hart Hill Gardens
My sister Madeline Hart and I are Irish twins (born less than a year apart). As young adults. I chose big city life while she and her husband, Thomas, went “back to the land.” They built a house that my architect father designed to nestle into a hill in Bayfield County, where they practiced organic gardening and supported themselves by developing a weaving cottage industry, Hart Handweaving. They created beautiful hand dyed wool rugs, table linens, fabrics and four amazing children. I was the lucky beneficiary of their hard work and came to be a part of it whenever I could - usually in the summers. Recently Madeline has turned her gardening prowess to raising a cornucopia of flowering plants and herbs alongside all the vegetables, grape vines and fruit trees.
When I retired from the performing arts management world, it was Madeline who encouraged me to follow a long held dream of learning to draw and specifically to draw the natural world. She sent me several how-to books on the art of botanical drawing. I will be forever grateful to her for encouraging me to take this artistic journey.
Bayfield, WI
The garden in the triangle
My husband, Stephen, and I were fortunate enough to buy a house in NW DC that overlooks a WWII community garden. During the pandemic this garden was my refuge. I became one of the managers of the garden in which several neighbors are responsible for plots where they grow food or flowers/herbs. By adding Mexican Sunflowers, Butterfly Weed, Gladiolus, Dahlias and Zinnias to the mix of long-standing perennial roses, peonies, iris and lilies, The Garden in the Triangle provides a bounty of botanical subjects for drawing throughout the seasons.
Washington, D.C.
Draw Botanical Community
One of the botanical drawing books I received from Madeline was Botanical Drawing in Color by Wendy Hollender. an accomplished botanical artist and teacher living on a farm in upstate New York. I fell in love. After a few months of reading her book and practicing creating 3 dimensional forms with colored pencils, I discovered her website, Draw Botanical, and started taking online classes in the techniques of drawing living plants and flowers using colored pencils. I would not be where I am as a botanical artist without Wendy’s guidance and the encouragement and feedback from the online community she has brought together.