Tag: Harlow Carr

Garden Painting Workshop

Hilary Cooper

I did consider taking acrylics and a canvas to today’s painting workshop at RHS Harlow Carr run by their current artist in residence, Hilary Burnett Cooper, but I stuck with my regular pen and watercolour and it was a chance to try my larger watercolour box on location. I recently updated it so that there are fewer strident greenish blues and earthy browns, replacing those with colours that would be more useful for flower painting.

Bergenia

Link

Hilary Burnett Cooper Landscape, scenic and figurative artist

Game of Scones

scones cartoon

Guardian critic Victor Lewis-Smith once slated the “Yorkshire Fat Rascal” as ‘an obese scone’, ‘a Yorkshire indelicacy’ and characterised the “Yorkshire rarebit with chopped fresh chives in Yorkshire Cobble bread” as ‘a self-aggrandising toastie’.* Ouch.

It’ll be all right on the night.

My favourite ‘Yorkshire indelicacy’ at Bettys’ is the Yorkshire Curd Tart. No one does a Yorkshire Curd Tart like Bettys. And it’s not just me who thinks that. Last time we were at RHS Harlow Carr we took our Latino Lattes out to a bench in the gardens and a robin hopped about around my our feet and beneath the bench, hoping we’d drop the odd crumb. Some hope.

But I did select one small, soft raisin and held it out at ground level. After some hesitation the robin darted forward and took it from my hand. It then went and perched in a bush behind us and burst into song.

*Guardian, 29 January 2005.

Autumn Fungi

Fungi at Harlow Carr this morning included common puffball and a large bracket growing on beech.

Lunchtime sketches.

The Majestic

I drew the magnificent pile that is the Majestic Hotel on a short break in Harrogate last month. Forty-five years ago, in August 1972, as part of my final project on the Graphic Design course at Leeds College of Art, I organised an exhibition at the Harrogate Festival about the life of Yorkshire composer William Baines (1899-1922) and a recital of his music by pianist Eric Parkin at the Majestic.

Drawn on the train from Leeds.

Harlow Carr

On our visits to Harrogate, we invariably head up through the Victorian park of the Valley Gardens and continue through The Pinewooods (left) at the top of the slope to Harlow Carr, RHS gardens.

With its vegetable and flower gardens, woodland walk, meadow area and alpine house, there’s always something to see, whatever the season. There’s even a woodland bird hide.