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A fun place to visit in the Spring!

Writer's picture: Roberta AhrensRoberta Ahrens

Updated: Jun 10, 2019

Cottage Gardens is always a fun and inspiring place to visit in the Spring!

Spring brings a bounty of blooms of all kinds and a couple of years ago I went to Cottage Gardens to find some new inspiration for my backyard and I came across a selection of papaver somniferum - POPPIES! - also known as the Opium Poppy.

There were red ones, purple ones, frilly ones, white ones… It was so hard to choose! So I wound up with several - red, purple and white - that I took home with me to plant in the yard.

The deep purple ended up being the most abundant, though little did I know what was to come.


Success!


Poppies bloom in late May through July. These fantastic blooms stand about 3 ½ - 4 feet tall and one plant can put off up to 6 - 8 flowers that then turn into pods which hold thousand of seeds. Quite magical that one flower can produce so much… truly PROLIFIC!


When my new flowers began to bloom it only took a few days for an absolute abundance of deep purple poppies to explode across my yard. It was wonderful… and amazing.


Much of my art (including many of my most popular pieces) are based on the presentation of these wonderful flowers. Their delicate structure, their amazing diversity, their incredible abundance all serve to inspire me over and over again.


They seem to call to people, and to other animals too!

One morning I came out to hundreds of bees exploring the inside of all of the purple poppies, gathering pollen and seemingly swooning in ecstasy as they dove deep into the flowers in a frenzy of activity loading up all that they could carry and flying away like an overloaded delivery truck.


Watching these magical bees roll around in the abundant flowers inspired a creative energy burst of of my own, and one day that spring I went into the studio set up 6 big 2 foot by 5 foot canvases of cracked linen and created a series of 6 flower pieces: a bright salmon orange hibiscus, a tropical flower on ivory, yellow poppies with pods, a pink echinacea, a tiger lily (my favorite in the series) and a deep purple poppy with pods. Over the past few years all of these pieces have found wonderful homes, all except Deep Purple Poppy, which presently has its home on the main wall of my studio.


If you’d like to see it up close and personal-like, give me a call and schedule a visit! I’d love to show it (as well as the rest of my currently available work), and discuss the possibilities!


Welcome to Poppy Season!!





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