Start your day with Garden Photos from Fine Gardening

Townhouse garden in Albany.

I usually start my day by for checking email and news of more gaffes by clueless candidates for office but Michelle Gervais, an editor of Fine Gardening Magazine, suggested I try subscribing to her morning emails of garden photos submitted by readers. I did and Im already hooked.

Another view of that Albany garden.

Michelle got the idea in early 2010 to post garden photos that had never made it into the magazine to a blog she calls Garden Photo of the Day, but over time it morphed into something much bigger and more fun readers submitting photos of their own gardens. According to Michelle,

Its so much fun and incredibly empowering to the readers, as people lavish each other with praise and offer helpful suggestions in the comments. So far weve managed to feature gardens from 37 of the 50 states, plus gardens from far-off places like Spain, Rwanda, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Hungary, Sweden, India, and Antarctica.

Sure enough, check out Darryls garden in Antarctica below.

Darryls hydroponic garden in Antarctica.

I have to confess that the part of the GardenRant Manifesto that says were Bored with perfect magazine gardens doesnt speak for me at all I can never get enough garden photos, especially the real ones like these, some of which look perfect but no no means all. My only complaint is that sometimes garden photos are so dark I strain to see whats going on in them. And then there are the magazines that feature furniture and lifestyle more than actual gardens and gardening, and I abandoned those years ago.

But now I can peruse the 685 gardens displayed on Garden Photo of the Day so far, and enlarge them enough to really see whats going on (thats why Michelle asks for hi-resolution photos, not because the magazine plans to use them in print).

Seems theres lots of us garden-photo fanatics, because the blog has over 13,500 email subscribers, and over 2,000 daily click-throughs.

The photos are also arranged by topic into some scrumptious Pinterest boards. And a new featured rolled out just yesterday is the ability to search by state. Thirteen states are missing, so readers in these states Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia - see what you can do about that, okay?

Some Faves

The Albany townhouse garden in the photos above inspire me as I look out onto my new, mainly bare townhouse yard. More here.

Some gardens I love for the stories, like the surgeon in India who turned to gardening after her Parkinsons Disease forced her to stop operating.

Hydroponics in Antarctica. Darryl, youre the man!

An Ontario garden that includes an old window to make a privacy screen more interesting while the plants in front of it are young. (Photo below). I want that window for my privacy screen!

A New York gardener who has submitted six batches of photos so far, including whole-garden shots and close-ups. Im not a big fan of close-ups but when theyre accompanied by wider spots theyre all to the good.

How to Follow

Heres the home page of Garden Photo of the Day blog.

Click here to sign up for daily emails.

Sign up via RSS.

Via: Start your day with Garden Photos from Fine Gardening