Vines overhead, plants at every level from the ground to the roof, and the entire arrangement obviously maintained by somebody who cares a great deal about it.
Gardens like this are almost impossible to photograph well because there is no single subject. Everything is equally green, equally busy and equally deserving of attention, and a camera has to choose.
Finding the frame inside the mess
What I ended up doing was looking for the structure underneath — the posts holding the vines, the line of the paving, the gap where the light comes through — and building the frame on those, letting the planting fill in around them.
- Look for the architecture, not the leaves.
- Find the one place light enters and put it in the frame.
- Shoot in shade rather than dappled sun, which shreds any sense of shape.
- Accept that some of it will be a tangle. That is what a garden is.
Photographed at about four in the afternoon with the whole space in shade, which is why the greens hold together instead of splitting into bright patches and black holes.
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