Hubert Savage, Architect (1)

 

Eventfulness of form

 

 

December 2008: cross-gabling makes for an impressive frontage

 

When architect Hubert Savage designed a bungalow for his own use back in 1913, he was following an Arts and Crafts instinct by building it over a shallow crawl space. This also allowed him to sidestep doing damage to the site's natural contours, making them instead into a part of the building itself. As a result, the house feels like it grows directly from the site it stands on. His decision to minimize the depth of this crawl space also made for a structure fitted to its surroundings in a way that houses back in town - laid out in arbitrarily defined subdivisions, on typically narrow lots - didn't. It's true that Savage's choice also trimmed the considerable costs of a concrete basement from his bottom line (typically, ten percent of total costs at the time; more if, in order to excavate a basement, bedrock needed to be blasted and hauled away). But Savage's choice was consequential beyond just the sparing of expenses: it allowed him, for example, on the garden (or west-facing) side of the house, to design a building sitting more or less directly at ground level. In Savage's eyes that would have been a serious positive, something to be aimed for.

 

Bungalow crawlspace under construction, USA somewhere, undated 

 

 

The photo above shows a bungalow crawlspace under construction (photo from Old Craftsman Style Homes, a social media group). It reveals just how simple this method of construction was relative to excavating a basement and pouring concrete foundations (just think of the equipment and material complexities that go with developing a basement on a rocky site like Savage's). The photo above shows how brick piers were used to support the sills and joists of the house. If this all appears somewhat rudimentary now, that's because it was a technique that was under-conceived at the time (it was used to expedite getting on with constructing a dwelling). Certainly it made for quicker and cheaper construction, but this sometimes came at the cost of convenient access to the building's underside, as well as to more-thorough proofing against undesirable effects, like rodents. Note, for example, how the brick piers shown above appear to rest directly on ground, either with only skimpy footings, or with none at all. Any moisture penetrating the crawlspace due to drainage issues would tend to be wicked up by bricks sitting in direct contact with ground - causing them, over time, to shift and spall. Savage's builders employed a similar technique in making the crawlspace on Grange Road: brick piers supporting joists and sills, coupled with curtain walls of stone to close up the perimeter. At some point, a number of additional posts were added, resting on precast cement footings, which served to reinforce vertical support for the building.

 

 

Bungalow under renovation, built over a low crawlspace, in the USA  

Reverend J. F. Cole's bungalow, on a low plinth, with liveried servants

The shallow depth of the crawlspace certainly reinforced the horizontal aesthetic, resulting in a building sitting near ground in true bungalow fashion (c.f. photo above). Traditional Indian bungalows, which the British 'borrowed' from rural suburbs lying beyond India's teeming cities and gradually modernized, invariably came on a low plinth, imparting strong horizontal lines. As a result, bungalows still appear most natural when sited close to the ground. And Savage was obviously after precisely this look: a low building under a sheltering roof projected well out over its walls, designed in that way to emphasize proximity to ground. It was both fashionable, and rather exotic, to design in this manner in 1913 - a method perhaps of differentiating the contemporary bungalow from houses that were more markedly Victorian - houses that tended to be taller (multi-storey homes with ceilings reaching as high as twelve or even fourteen feet, versus eight feet and a few inches of ceiling height in many bungalows).

 

1911 ad for Garden City: note the price-creep in the subsequent ad 

 

Garden City backers hoped a new rail line would trigger rapid growth

 

But whatever led the Savages to build a house way out in what was then still a part of the boonies? Certainly it didn't hurt that parcels on quarter acre lots were being advertised with city water and electric lighting, as well as the promise of sidewalks and graded streets (see first ad, above, but note that such claims are missing in the 1912 version). The real answer to this question undoubtedly had to do with the cheapness of quarter-acre parcels in Garden City, a suburban enclave comprised of cleared land with some choice upland parcels (such as the holding acquired by the Savages). The investors backing this real estate development play hoped that Garden City would develop rapidly, courtesy of a new electric rail line (c.f. the ads above picturing an Interurban Railway line that became operational in 1913). The Savages' land purchase allowed them to build a new home within walking distance of a stop along the new Interurban line. A location within walking distance of Marigold Junction made commuting downtown, where Savage's architectural office was located, entirely feasible. It also meant that the Savages could inhabit a ridge-site dotted with mature oaks, at a comparatively short distance from downtown (roughly five kilometres). The opportunity cost of their purchase was unbelievably low relative to today's inflated land prices - if we assume the Savages acquired two premium upland parcels, which they could have done for no more than $1200 (ultimately, there was enough land to subdivide into three generous parcels, plus a leftover chunk that was ultimately added to Marigold Park). The cost of purchase, rendered in 2024 dollars, would have been just under $38,000 (if they paid full price based on the ads). These days, when a single RS-6 lot nearby sells for as much as $800,000, made this a serious bargain!

 

 

Garden City Hall, built in expectation of rapid development, circa 1921

 

As a credentialed British architect with Arts and Crafts values, Savage was determined that his new bungalow do minimal damage to the natural landscape (he knew exactly what the opportunity before him was actually worth). This was in sharp contrast to the way things were being done back in town, where natural context wasn't allowed to suggest the orientation or design of new houses. The principal facts for consideration were the adjacent homes, sitting on streets of uniformly platted lots. But out in the pristine countryside in Saanich, on a large lot with abundant natural features, nature could be allowed to play a more formative, even a defining, role. Working in concert with the scenic possibilities, rather than disregarding them in favour of houses packed onto long thin lots like tinned sardines, presented Savage with the unique opportunity to design a structure that was compatible with its surroundings, which meant he a worthier outcome. Savage's interest in building unobtrusively in the landscape, and making the existing scenery and natural contours serve as context for his new building, just happened to align with the natural hollow paralleling the ridge on which the bungalow came to be built. This physical feature, coupled with Savage's preference for benign construction, led him to utilize the natural hollow as his crawl space.

 

 

Modern building site: cleared and levelled, emphasizing contractor convenience 

 

Following the design-lead offered by the hollow also enabled him to orient the building optimally for light-capture while still taking advantage of the views. All Savage had to do, given the physical structure of the site, was limit the length of his building to more or less that of the natural hollow. Given that he was aiming to design a small, artistic bungalow anyway (a structure of less than 1600 square feet, all in) the limitation on building length didn't involve major sacrifice. Of course, there were knock-on consequences to siting a building this organically, among them the remarkable proximity to ground along the western and northern edges. But as we shall see from interpreting the outcome, there were many other advantages to this method of siting - all turned to account by an aspiring young Arts and Crafts architect.

 

 

Tiny crawlspace door that inhibits easy access

 

While the shallowness of the crawlspace was arguably aesthetically desirable for the overall look of the bungalow, Savage's choice of location for the access turned actually getting under the building into a chore (c.f. photo above, noting how small this opening actually is). Placing it in a cramped location between the building and rising bedrock, right against one of those supporting brick piers (to the right, photo above) complicates both entry and exit. Some bungalows built over crawlspaces dealt with the problem of access by providing for entry from within the building, by means of a panel of flooring that could be lifted, placed in a corridor or even in a substantial closet. Savage however, for reasons that remain unclear, preferred exterior entry, yet shied away from locating the door where the stone foundation was deepest - towards the southeast corner - a location where the entrance might have been larger, thus simplifying getting underneath the building; clearly, Savage the architect was keen to minimize the appearance of the access point, which he brilliantly succeeded in doing! And so, the opening he left us is barely large enough for a full-sized adult. Worse still, because the door is located where bedrock rises towards the sill plate, one has to enter the crawlspace feet first, on one's stomach, in order to get oriented inside (the crawlspace floor deepens out quickly once you are fully in, but as the ground falls away sharply, backing-in is mandated; plus, matters have been further complicated by the recent addition of a cast-iron drain pipe near the portal, which has the effect of further constraining getting in and out). It's almost as if Savage believed he would never have to actually go down there himself! But of course, one does indeed have to get under the building, if only for access to the plumbing and electrical systems! I cursed that small, awkward entry point (door-less when I moved first moved in) through three-and-a-half decades of living otherwise quite comfortably in the Savage bungalow, because it turned access to the building's underside into a chore. And not least of all in emergencies, such as when, in the dead of winter, in the middle of the night, a pipe under the building bursts due to a sudden cold snap, and then has to be shut off, manually  - something that actually happened during my first winter in there! Of course, I subsequently had the plumbing system under the building reconfigured so there were shut-off valves within easy reach of the crawlspace door!

 

Accessible Remoteness 

Alan Gowans, who wrote The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture 1890 - 1930, notes that houses designed expressly for greater human comfort first arose in new middle-class suburbs made possible by reliable forms of long distance transit (in the first instance, steam railroads in America). Later, electric streetcar networks, and then the longer electric Interurban rail-lines that linked dispersed regional centres into networks, began distributing these residential enclaves as suburbs on the periphery of urban regions across North America. In addition to homes suddenly incorporating novel provisions for enhanced creature comforts (like electric wiring, telephones, indoor plumbing, bathrooms, hot water, etc, all of which arrived in the blink of an eye) Gowans says that the existence of these rural enclaves also saw the birth of a new type of dwelling - one designed expressly for these more-rural locales, with their more-generous natural landscapes. In the Grange Road bungalow, I believe we can see an example of this new dwelling-type emerging, built well out in pristine countryside, with access to its relative remoteness enabled by a novel form of electric rapid transit.

 

 

Tod Inlet Station, a stop along the Saanich Interurban Line, ca 1919

 

Scale model, interior of an Interurban Line car, courtesy Aaron Lypkie

Downtown Interurban platform, across the road from Victoria City Hall

 

"The idea of a location far enough from the city to have rural qualities – open fields nearby, good-sized garden behind, and set off from the street by a front lawn – yet close enough for people to commute to the city to earn their living, was new." The rural lands opened to development by rail access prompted creation of the novel house-type, a hybrid Gowans calls "a combination of country and city home," one with "a basically horizontal look...with the long facade facing the street". In this sense, Savage's picturesque intentions for his own bungalow just happened to mirror the fashion then occurring in rural suburbs right across North America. But being an architect who was designing a home for his own family's use, he could endow his version of the bungalow with bona fide Arts and Crafts attributes (for example, organic building placement, see first section above).

 

Artistic bungalow, gable-end facing the road, in Victoria (now stuccoed)

 

Savage bungalow, length turned towards Grange Road, rural suburban style

 

 

Not only did the length of the new house-type face the road (in what would soon become typical of suburban layout) but this novel form of placement stood in sharp contrast to similar buildings found in town, which were increasingly built with their gable ends facing the road, on more standardized and narrower lots (see photo one, above). Having the length of the building turned towards the street in 1913 constituted an entirely novel look in domestic architecture, one that derived ultimately from the relative cheapness of the rural lands now conveniently connected by rail corridors to the urban core. "Neither city nor country houses, they represented a really new kind of dwelling, designed for a new, suburban kind of place." I would contend that this is precisely the sort of dwelling Savage imagined building out in the back of beyond in Garden City: an Arts and Crafts bungalow with all the modern conveniences, a building on a single level with a sheltering roof form and emphatically horizontal lines, a long cross-gabled facade facing the road, perched remarkably comfortably in a minimally altered natural landscape.

 

 

The cover of Garden Cities Of Tomorrow (1901)

 

The Garden City idea, as elaborated by Ebenezer Howard in his Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1901) didn't quite fit the local vision for Saanich's Garden City, which might more accurately have been called a 'garden suburb' rather than a city. It was from the outset envisaged as a place to reside primarily, and in no sense was it ever an effort to foster a complete community, with industries and farms integral to its makeup (Howard's actual vision for Garden Cities). The people who lived in Saanich's version of Garden City were expected to commute daily to downtown in order to earn a living, retreating to this residential suburb at night. Which is exactly how the Savages envisaged using their new dwelling.

 

Government St. back in the day: note gable ends facing the road

 

 

 

Vancouver, West End, houses with gables facing the road, on narrow lots

 

The differentiation of suburban-style buildings  located in open countryside from their in-town counterparts was often further accentuated, Gowans says, by the practice of designing markedly different facades for the front, sides, and rear of the house - an approach that further individualized such buildings, adding considerably to their distinctive visual appeal (usually these houses came with enhanced linking environments as well, such as paths, verandahs and sleeping porches). Houses in town, built on narrower, more standardized lots, tended to come with their sidewalls designed similarly, with fewer windows in them because of the closeness of neighbouring residences. The Savage bungalow differed in every way from such houses, but in this instance the process of differentiating facades was taken a step further, as Savage ultimately created a house with four unique facades (in this, whether he was conscious of it or not, Savage was in effect doing what Philip Webb (the first British Arts and Crafts architect) regularly did. Of course, back when the Savages built their bungalow, there were no other neighbouring dwellings - all of that was yet to come, but certainly they expected it to happen, because the people moving into Garden City believed that the new rail link would trigger rapid settlement (as did the entrepreneurs who invested so handsomely in building the Interurban line). That's not the way things would play out ultimately, however: the new rail line became so starved for customers that it had to be shut down in 1923, a victim of the profound economic slump that started in 1913 and presaged the effects of the First World War, and unregulated competition from the jitney cabs that immediately appeared in droves (see picture two below). Suddenly, over 50 such jitneys were active in the Victoria region alone (they set up an association for lobby against regulation) cutting dramatically into the electric railway's passenger market. Ultimately however, the new reality may not have mattered all that much to the Savages, who got to enjoy a luxurious scenic hillside and design a unique bungalow as their own home.

 

Opening day, 1913 on the Saanich Interurban line, Sluggett family photo

  

Lake Hill 'jitney' bus in the 1916 snowstorm: unregulated competition

Cross-gabled east-facing front facade, emphasizing horizontal lines

 

Savage opted to run his bungalow along the ridge defining the site (running south-to-north) which, among other things, allowed him to impart feelings of grandeur to the building as viewed from the approach path (the plain quality of the main gable roof form is on this facade relieved by a trio of cross-gabled bays that step the building dramatically out into the landscape). The house (photo above) is evidently designed to emphasize horizontal lines and proximity to ground, thus standing in marked contrast to the more vertical, Victorian-era buildings characteristic of town (c.f. next photo).

 

 

Bungalow next to a taller Victorian-era house: horizontal vs vertical emphasis

 

 

Savage took full advantage of the upland site to generate long front and rear facades for his new  bungalow. Fitting the house intimately onto the site, he contrived a shallow oblong - just two compact rooms and a tiny circulation corridor for the back (northern) half of the building, which he deepened somewhat at the southern end, so as to accommodate a 'summer tea room' that functioned as a porch with a garden door. This addition to the building width is gained by jogging the building's footprint outwards and slightly lifting the roof-line. The cross-gabled frontage is consistent with traditional Tudor-era buildings common in Savage's native England, an attribute he transformed masterfully into two roofed bays book-ending a welcoming verandah (see second photo below). This verandah, its substantial roof resting comfortably on top of two tall tapered stone pillars  crowned by trios of short, chunky timber posts, impressively dresses the ridge.

Fords Hospital, Coventry, England, built in 1509, cross-gabled roof form

 

Cross-gabled roof, dramatically advancing verandah flanked by roofed bays

The bungalow's south wall (its true gable end) differs totally from the street facade in treatment, comprising an asymmetric assembly of window shapes, types, sizes and formats that are integrated into a coherent whole (as shown in the photos below: balanced overall, window placement dictated by the floor plan). On this wall Savage delivers a facade that displays what Nicholas Pevsner once characterized as the English genius for 'informal grouping' (c.f., The Englishness Of English Art).

South facade: an asymmetrical collage of shapes set in a horizontal matrix

South wall pictured in more wan end-of-day light, in December 2017

 

Along this wall, two projecting bays sport unusual fixed-pane leaded-glass windows, one (to the left, photo above) a transom placed above two leaded-glass casements, the other a standalone window composed of honeycomb-shaped (hexagonal) panes. Untypically for this house, the roofed bays on the south wall also sport exposed rafter tails - a touch of Craftsman-type styling - whereas the main soffits are enclosed, hiding the rafters in a manner consistent with many of Victoria's Arts and Crafts-style buildings. The south wall impresses the viewer as dramatically as the street facade does, while exhibiting entirely different features (yet continuing Savage's pattern of jogging of exterior wall planes for livelier movement). Due to the way the land falls away at the south-east corner, which necessitates a much-deeper stone foundation there, the south facade appears dramatically taller than the opposite, north-facing, gable end (photo below) where the building appears to rest directly on the ground, without visible foundation, and is clearly just one storey high. 

 

The west wall differs dramatically from those facing east and south

 

The west wall roof lifts slightly to accommodate the back door and porch

 

Porch roof (left) lifted slightly in order to incorporate an array of utilities

The long west wall also steps outwards at the building's south-west end (to the right, middle photo above) with the roof lifted slightly in order to accommodate a rear door and what on our watch became a conservatory room with a window seat and views to the garden. You can make out the slight lift of the roof in the photo immediately above, which enables just enough height-gain with a barrel-vaulted ceiling to accommodate the enclosed porch and rear door. Note also how, on this facade especially (middle picture above) the bungalow sits remarkably near to ground, literally resting on it along the northern edge (to the left, top picture above). This facade, again differentiated from the one that faces the road, is however no less visually appealing. Here the architect explores the opposite impression given by the design of the street facade, exposing the main gable roof with its two chimneys, on a building that, because it sits virtually at ground level, declares itself to be only one storey high (photos below). In contrast, the main gable roof is largely masked from view on the front facade, due to the land's elevation and the prominent cross gables. Here on the west side, one steps out through a back door that feels remarkably close to ground, then walks out into a protected garden set in an oak meadow.

 

 

Front facade with prominent cross-gables masking the main roof form

The west wall sits at ground level, leading out into an oak meadow

 

The photo below shows the north facade of the house, which is architecturally similar to the south end, but has less of the drama that derives from height and unique detailing. Fewer windows appear on this facade too, obviously by design. At the north end, the natural hollow under the bungalow is very shallow, so this part of the crawlspace is somewhat inaccessible. This feature does however reinforce a remarkable proximity to ground, making it feel as though the bungalow grows out of it and is fused with it. At some point early on, Savage decided to add a walk-in closet beyond the bedrooms located at the north end of the house. This addition explains the small shed-roofed structure nestled against the north-facing gable end (c.f. photo below) a fact that Savage uses to further differentiate this facade from the other three. You can also see that Savage designed the walk-in closet to work with the site's natural contours, preferring to step the bungalow up the land-form rather than excavate the rock outcrop in order to keep things at one level (the modern building culture's reflexive choice these days would be to level the rock outcrop). This had beneficial consequences inside too, in creating a second level for the building's footprint necessitating a substantial step-up in order to access the walk-in closet. The walk-in closet is shown as already existing by the time Savage drafted a first floor plan, in 1933 (ergo, the addition was done prior to that date) - making a seamless addition to an already complex small house! Heritage consultant Stuart Stark remarked that the walk-in closet has art-deco features that make it slightly inconsistent with the design of the main building, but still congruent with the bungalow's design. Perhaps this was Savage's way of demonstrating that buildings grow over time, and that he was not afraid of demarcating a new building era? The idea was not unprecedented among Arts and Crafts architects (c.f. Edward Lutyens)

 

 

North gable rising from ground, walk-in closet stepped up the landform

 

 

 

 

Step-up to the walk-in closet added later on

 

Books For Looks:

Alan Gowans, The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture, 1890 to 1930. 

Nicholas Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art.

Ebeneezer Howard, Garden Cities Of Tomorrow, 1901.

 

 

 

 

 

Still Life, Close Up

 

 

 

"The force of a photograph is that it keeps open to scrutiny instants which the normal flow of time immediately replaces." Susan Sontag, On Photography
 

 

 

Watering can, sedum, pots: found still life

 

Photography gives us the power to isolate a scene from its context and by so doing, make it seem self-sufficient: above, a watering can, some plants in pots, and nature poking through and around. Instant still life composition, if you will. This ability to isolate scenes reveals endless subject matter in gardens, which while presenting as unified wholes comprise an array of scenic elements. Any number of them in fact, as it's quite arbitrary where one begins and another ends. But the camera's shutter resolves any ambiguity with finality, peeling off a distinct slice of reality and rendering it a self sufficient whole - a small world all on its own. And in these digital times, compositions can simply be re-framed with the lens until a pleasing amalgam of content and angle emerges. Now, why it is that one collection of objects suits the eye while another does not remains a mystery, a by-product of aesthetics, opportunity, and subjective intent. Also, the technical frame of the camera lens - the rectangular boundaries that can be set horizontally or vertically to bring objects closer or set them further back - causes modes of viewing to appear that aren't necessarily evident in the same way to the naked eye. As a recording device, cameras create a facsimile of reality and in so doing, effect entirely new possibilities.

 

 

Waxy, unopened cones snapped off by a windstorm, from an Atlas Cedar

 

Releasing the camera shutter determines the take with finality, and the beauty revealed (if any was sought) indeed lies in the eye of the beholder. I haven't reflected on where this urge to assemble objects into still life compositions, or to focus on patterns or details in scenery, actually comes from. But I seem always to have inclined towards it myself (my godmother painted still lifes and close ups, and I was always intrigued by her art) and I still enjoy searching for what appears to be a good cluster. These almost invariably have some innocence, humbleness or even a certain naievete about them, although marks of wear, indications of time's passage, and even signs of slow demise can for me model beauty in everyday things. I've also come to realize that my eye doesn't distinguish still life from close up photography very precisely, so these tend to shade into a continuum of effects. In this post I'm sharing a few of my own takes as eye-bait and to illustrate how even simple things - as often found together by chance as intentionally grouped into an ensemble - can yield, if not outright beauty, then at least compelling visual interest when focused upon and isolated. Of course, the momentary passing light they're seen in matters too, structuring the distinctive impression they leave - for in some sense, the collection of objects or block of patterns actually is the light the picture shows it in.

 

Snail completing a long stretch across the gap between paving stones

 

Sometimes you happen upon subject matter by chance, as when I noticed the snail above patiently crossing a deep gulf between paving stones. We only see these snails after a soaking rain, while the ground is moist enough that they can move about without dehydrating. This picture involves an element of chance insofar as it only existed for a moment: here the snail is just completing a prodigious stretch across the gap, drawing its shell back over an extended body in completion of its forward movement. Chance timing, while a great generator of pictures (this scene changed continuously, if in slow motion) is one source of still life, but I also enjoy using certain favoured objects as props in creating garden compositions. I deploy them to catch or model particular effects, as with the watering can in the opening shot in this post, or the weathered teak chairs below. They reliably impart specific impressions of light at a particular moment while displaying seasonal effects. The watering can confirms the nature of the scene portrayed, suggests human engagement with plants and implies something intimate about the garden itself. Back to that continuum of effects I mentioned: the weathered chairs below could be considered more scenic details than true still life.

 

Weathered chairs with emphatic shadow lines

 
Quite apart from my reliable metal watering can and the weathered teak chairs, regular garden plants themselves furnish limitless opportunity to frame photos as still life. Perhaps this practice bends or stretches the notion of still life even further, but catching objects at the moment the shutter releases does guarantee fusion into a relationship in the outcome. I instinctively search for clusters of objects combining elements of spontaneity and arrangement, so there is somewhat of a found quality incorporated into the picture (by 'found', I mean that some force other than conscious human intention helps achieve the arrangement, such as time, weather, or the chance placements of nature). The next shot illustrates this blend of intention and discovery: the rocks are of my choosing, but the blossoms are from a neighbour's wandering wisteria that has grown through the fence and into the scene (with a little encouragement from the gardener). I find this recognition game endlessly entertaining, with the added benefit of yielding pictures that embody particular moments. There is, I know, if not an artificiality, then at least an unreality to this, as all growing things are actually in motion and at any point fall somewhere between being born and if not outright dying, then dying back. But, so too are the fruits and flowers that appear in painted still lifes, and even the vessel containing them, captured in the painting's singular moment, likely winds up broken at some point down the line.

 

 

Placed rock cluster with found wisteria blossoms

 

To me, flowers themselves are among the most intriguing garden subjects for still life or close up compositions. Individual flowerings typically result in a brief but spectacular show of bloom, after which the plant's presence recedes to context. Below is a shot of a bearded iris that isolates an intricate bloom with fetching falls against a background of indistinct green tinged with yellow, amplifying the overall impression. I like using this technique of selective focus to create a context that's more colour than form and that has a sympathetic effect by placing the principal object in sharper relief. This makes the background more effect than distinct setting.

 

 

A single iris bloom makes a still-life composition

 

Below is another frame, taken on a different April day. Both the iris above and the tulip below are plants that came with the garden, which occurred some thirty years ago this spring. I've helped them continue to flourish here by periodically dividing and replanting them in freshened soil, and they have responded by reliably adding their simple beauty to spring's slow, captivating narrative. I've come to realize through close observation that here on southern Vancouver Island, with our temperate climate and slow, moist spring, spring-flowering plants often show early, middle, and late iterations, a fact that can be marshalled by gardeners to prolong the sequence of effects for daffodils, tulips, quince and lilacs, thus extending their floral impact far longer. I was unaware of this potential for floral differentiation while growing up in Ontario, where spring tends to come all at once and things flower simultaneously rather than in such distinct sequences. The tulip shown below is in the middle-to-late part of tulip-time on this site, helping push the season into a fifth or perhaps even a sixth week of species-flowering. In this photo, some purplish hints in the indistinct background enhance the delicate pink of the tulip flower. To botanize a bit, here we are playing around with varieties so as to express species-effects.

 

Tulip flower thrown into relief against a distant background

 

Another thing I enjoy exploring in plants-as-subjects is the vast array of impressions transmitted over the course of their flowering and finishing, from first appearance to full-on flourishing and even, for certain plants, extending so far as their beauty in running to seed. Below, an annual lunaria has set large seeds that are discernible within semi-translucent pods, shown while the plant is still alive, yet not that long before it expires and begins bleaching to fall grey. Lunaria, known commonly as 'honesty' in England, is also called 'money plant' in Asia, and 'silver dollars' in the USA. The latter two names refer to its thin, dried seed pods having a somewhat coin-like appearance. In 1884, Van Gogh painted a lovely still life of honesty's bleached pods in a vase with other floral elements surrounding it, but they are not made to resemble coins in his rendering. 

 

Lunaria sets its seed in coin-shaped pods that turn grey when it dies

 

Camas lilies are native to our slender peninsula on Southern Vancouver Island, a key landscape signifier in spring's slow, spectacular flourish. The quintessential meadow flower, camas thrust up dramatically under the native Garry oaks before leafing out, seeming to appear from nowhere (as bulbs do) sometime between late March and early April, initially strikingly blue-tinged as the blooms appear, but running towards a purple effect as the petals burst open. The shot below captures this briefly blue moment, just before the full floral explosion. I am particularly fond of these dramatic local lilies, reintroduced here to a garden contrived in a setting of mature oaks. Camas under oaks are a vestige of the extensive coastal prairie once maintained by controlled burning of underbrush by the Coast Salish peoples, the original inhabitants of Victoria and its environs. Ironically, it was their luxuriant spring flowering that caused British explorers to describe the first-nation-groomed coastal prairie as "a perfect Eden", never troubling to understand the role of human intention (or its utilitarian purpose, which was starch-yield) that caused the 'paradisial' effect. 

 

Camas flowers before the turn to purple

 

Close up and still life both allow us to observe a cluster of objects, or a pattern made striking by angle and light, and catch them in a framed view with the camera. Each represents a distinct moment in time, frozen by the frame. I obviously enjoy this association of objects through the lens, which is something that can be done equally well inside the house as out in the garden. The next still life composition catches an interesting combination of shapes, patterns and tones in filtered daylight, with the added complexity of reflection in a small mirror. The gentle softness of indirect exterior light gives this shot its mellow, peaceful quality.

 

 

Mellow light for a cluster of objects intensified by reflection in a mirror

 

Our house-and-garden combination offers many opportunities to frame scenes that capture elemental forces in changing lights. A decorated house with ample windows in every room admits light that suggests compositions based on clustered details. This capability exists because our eyes today are fully adapted to seeing photographs of fragments of things - parts taken to stand for the wholes they've been drawn from - that are still capable of invoking mood for the absent totality. We are able to enjoy even the discontinuity effected by the lens and the framing of the image, because our eyes are not affected by the arbitrary closure at the edges. We literally view subject matter  photographically when looking into a picture. 

 

 

Light and shadow effects as still-life

Our house receives a great deal of sunlight due to its placement on a hill combined with its many large windows facing east, south and west. One effect is that the inside receives changing light throughout the course of a day, modifying the mood in its interior spaces. This allows the framing of many views of patterns and clusters of objects, with scenery often glimpsed through windows as context (as above, looking west).

Recycled stained glass shed window, itself a still-life composition

I find light admitted through window glass endlessly fascinating as a source of images, here a stained glass window backlit by light from the west. This window, one of a pair acquired by chance at auction many years before the shed took shape in my imagination, had a long life prior to landing in its current position as part of another building. I bought the pair of windows based on the fanciful idea that the rather art-deco flower theme would go well in a garden structure that I designed to be observed from the house. As I wasn't actively contemplating building one at that moment, it turned out to be a great choice when the idea finally came to fruition. 

 

Cluster of chive flowers in a retrieved discarded aspirin bottle

 

One day I was taken by the simple beauty of some chive flowers in an old aspirin bottle viewed in fading afternoon light, against a backdrop of deco tile in our bathroom. The aspirin bottle was retrieved from a midden in the yard, which served as a final resting place for glass goods in the days before garbage pickup in this locale. I unearthed it while turning over a garden bed. The combination comprises a humble still life of found and grown objects, reflecting nature brought inside and placed in a piece of the inside world that was retrieved from outside purely by chance, having been tossed there some decades prior.

 

Montbretia's flowers bring a foretaste of autumn's fiery colour palette

 

Many garden still lifes or close ups convey a background sense of the season they represent - flowers flower in a particular window in the unfolding garden season and imply their place and time in the sequence of bloom. Even the quality of the light itself can be seasonally revealing. The picture above is of Montbretia, which here flowers in later summer and prefigures the fall colour shift. However, seasonality can be made to play an even more explicit role in defining the overall composition. Below is an example of snow's presence truly defining a scene, in a rather sombre way here due to the dullness of the light on that day. This lack of punch in the light actually reinforces an abstract, monochrome quality, making the scene appear almost black and white (b+w photography amplifies lines of force and spatial presence in images) but for the hint of mustardy yellow on the south face of the limbs and the terra cotta chimney intruding below. 

 

Monochrome light, snow on oak limbs, chimney

 

Winter of course presents numerous opportunities for close ups, but snow remains difficult to convey with a camera. Most often it simply over-exposes the image, becoming indistinct and almost bland thereby. But unique conditions of light occasionally combine with unmodified snow effects to produce stellar results. In the following photo, the house's end gable defines the composition, the snow drifts softening its overall architectural effect considerably. The result conveys a sense of home as a cozy refuge.

 

Freshly fallen snow weighs down plants, softening the massive gable end

Just as snow reliably conveys wintry conditions, fallen leaves signify autumn's decisive impact on plants. As the production of chlorophyll comes to an end triggered by the shortening days, foliage-green gives way to underlying pigments that are masked during the growth phase. This picture to me catches the warmth of fall coloration and the sculpting of the leaf as it has dried out.

 

Nothing says 'autumn' like fallen leaves, here a big leaf maple

 

Freezing rain in winter can also lend dramatic impact to the appearance of plants, giving even contextual plantings renewed potential to serve as subjects for still life. Seeing the physical world through a glazed coating is visually astounding, rendering the ordinary elements of everyday life freshly intriguing to observe. The aftermath of freezing rain makes me want to go wandering in the wonderland of special effects, seeking after visual interest and knowing that I won't be disappointed (despite heightened personal risk). The next shot is of a clump of ornamental grass inclined under the weight of a thick coating of ice, a structure within a solid that's totally on view.

 

 

Freezing rain imprisoning grass in a coating of translucent ice

 

The next shot, taken after the same ice storm, shows how universal the coating of frozen rain actually is, here emphasized by thin strands of page-wire fencing. Brilliant sunshine reflecting from the glassy coating brings the ice right up to the eye, which notices the rolling quality of the horizontal wire (traces of the spool it came from) more than it otherwise would. I like the simplicity and relative peacefulness of this composition, which takes a moment to come into sharp focus.

 

Page-wire fencing coated with frozen rain emphasizing forms

 

One winter day I happened to be working in the back garden, collecting debris shaken loose from our oak trees during the latest windstorm. I was taken by the array of bits and pieces of lichen, mosses and fungi strewn across the lawn, sometimes appearing on a piece of oak branch and invoking the unique colour palette of these wet-season organisms. So I pulled an assortment of random bits together on a garden bench, and from that derived the following shot as a creative clustering of this aerial debris. The picture frame 'notices' it by capturing the concentrated grouping, something our eye wouldn't make appear in quite the same way without this act of isolation. I enjoy its odd shapes and colours immensely - the aquas especially!

 

Found-debris downed by a winter storm, fungus and lichen now assort

 

Many garden plants interact uniquely with their environment to create special effects. For example, seasoned gardeners often notice the particular way that rain pools on a foxglove's tubular flowers, forming distinct droplets as gravity gradually draws the moisture towards ground. Something about the flower seems almost to repel the water, forcing it to collect into droplets. You can almost feel it moving downwards despite being frozen into a still picture. These effects are transient, so if you're to catch them you need to keep your camera ready to hand. I like to garden that way myself, with the camera nearby. Then, if something suggests itself to the eye, or the light suddenly turns transcendent, the means of recording the passing effects are ready to hand. As often as not, that will simply become a still life composition. Or, is it a close up? Or maybe a detail?

 

Raindrops clustering on foxglove flowers

My point is simply that even the humblest of gardens, say an assortment of pots on a deck or a small terrace, offers opportunities to render plants into such still life compositions. Van Gogh did it memorably with many plants, including clusters of picked flowers in a vase. These paintings, now famous, remained obscure in his lifetime (as did most of his oeuvre), but must have given him intense satisfaction. Look around your world and you'll see such opportunities lying everywhere. Go ahead and compose. It's a way to preserve a fragment of the flow of time for future contemplation. And it's good fun.

 

Campanula (bell flowers) after a rain

 

Affectionately dedicated to my long-departed godmother, Molly Parbery, whose still life painting hung on my bedroom wall while growing up.