Blog

At launch of my new e-pub site, PhotoBotanic.com, one book is ready, 3 more scheduled. I have spent 30+ years in garden publishing, and am still standing.  I sold my first photograph 42 years ago.  Along the way I have received some nice awards and have...

I see what I see, even if I can't show it very well on a blog.  Here, the peeling bark of a Manzanita (Arctostaphylos densiflora) has been transformed into elegant orange, rust, and mahogany brush strokes with the Topaz Simplify3 filter.  It looks great in...

The Sea Ranch is legendary in the annals of California Coastal development.  In the early 1960's, ten miles of the Sonoma Coast was designated for development, in an era before there was any regulatory agency overseeing coastal development. Now, and as a result of such...

  As a professional garden photographer for more than 25 years, I have seen all sorts of gardens and have learned a lot from many expert gardeners, designers, and plant geeks. California native plant gardens are absolutely the hardest to photograph, though they are my...

Let's actually do something about climate change.  The Green New Deal is an actual plan.  Support it. The climate has changed: recent fires in California, early hurricanes in the Gulf, Canadian ice shelves breaking off into the sea.   Let's stop wringing our hands. When young...

A recent assignment took me to a very special magnolia in a very special, private garden.  The resulting photo was to be a surprise gift, and I was only allowed access during one afternoon when the owner was away. I previously wrote about this adventure on Gardening...

Some days, simply venturing out with the camera is truly a tonic.  With full intent to go capture some photo or another, I escape the office, get out of doors, needing, indeed craving for photos to wash over me, allow me to click a...

I am a member of the Lawn Reform Coalition, a group of garden designers and environmental advovates who are promoting new ways to think about the American fetish for lawns.  Since my own particular advocacy is for sustainability, and most recently, meadow gardening specifically,...

These leaves were photographed last autumn when I visited my cousin in Vermont.  I drove all across the state looking for fall color and then found this scene by a pond behind her property in rural Proctorsville.  Something to be learned about not driving...

  I first posted this picture to my Gardening Gone Wild post Depths of Perception 2 months ago as I began exploring my new vision after the vitrectomy.  At that time, despite the worries over my eye, I was giddy with new photos.  I couldn't...