Jill Welham: The Secret Garden Collection
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In the summer of 2020 Jill was given access to a private garden in North Yorkshire containing a selection of rare and unusual plants. She visited the garden and took specimens of some of the flowers and leaves to create this unique collection of wet cyanotypes. Every print is a one of a kind original. Five of Jill's favourite images have been reproduced to create the greetings cards pack also available from this page.
The images here are the result of this project and are now available to purchase. Click on the Buy Now button for the image you would like to buy and you will be taken to the listing on my Etsy shop. Each print is signed in pencil on the back and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. The prints are supplied unframed and unmounted and will be posted in a stiffened envelope packed in a cellophane bag. Prices include worldwide postage and packing (international shipping charges will be applied to purchases of greetings cards). Packs of five blank greetings cards are available to purchase directly from my Etsy shop If you have any further queries please do email me and I will be happy to help. I can provide a gift wrapping service at no extra charge if required, just add a note to your order. |
Welcome to the Secret Garden please scroll down to view the images and click on each one for an enlarged view. I hope that you will enjoy your journey through the foliage!
Polygonatum multiflorum
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Polygonatum multiflorum (Solomon’s seal) is a shade loving, rhizomatous perennial with slightly arching stems and small clusters of 2-6 nodding, tubular creamy-white flowers tipped with green in late spring. Gracefully hanging from the leaf axils, they are followed in autumn by attractive blue-black berries. Highly ornamental, the elegant foliage of oval to lance shaped, mid-green leaves turns attractive shades of yellow in autumn.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 45 x 65 cm. Price £250 including worldwide postage and packing. This print will be dispatched in a cardboard tube as it is too large for regular flat shipping. |
Chaerophyllum hirsutum 'Roseum'
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Chaerophyllum hirsutum 'Roseum' (Hairy Chervil) this lovely cow parsley relative is one of the joys of early summer. Over a base of feathery leaves stand branching stems, each holding a flat-topped head of lilac-mauve tiny flowers.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 38 cm. Price £100 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Maianthemum racemosum
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Maianthemum racemosum (False Solomon’s Seal) perennial with graceful, slightly arching stems featuring narrow ovate, ponted, mid-green leaves with strong parallel veins running up to the tip. Rose fragranced, plume-like clusters of small, white flowers appear in mid to late spring. They give way to ruby red berries in late summer. The foliage of this native North American plant turns a lovely yellow in autumn.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 38 cm. Price £100 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Molopospermum peloponnesiacum
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Molopospermum peloponnesiacum (Striped hemlock) this large and ornamental, strongly aromatic perennial plant comes from the mountains of central and southern Europe. It has handsome and decorative, shiny, long-pointed, fern-like foliage and bears in late spring large numbers of yellow turning cream flowers. It is found growing wild in the Alps and Pyrenees. In the Eastern Pyrenees, the young leaves and stems are used in the preparation of liqueurs or eaten fresh in salads.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 38 cm. Price £100 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Osmunda regalis
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Osmunda regalis (Royal fern) is a tall, robust deciduous fern noted for its unique form and texture, forming a large rosette of elegant, broadly divided, bright green fronds. Emerging pinkish in spring they are crowned with rusty-brown fertile flower spikes at their tips. The foliage turns attractive shades of red in autumn.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 38 cm. Price £100 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Paris quadrifolia
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Paris quadrifolia (Herb-paris) the four broad, oval leaves of Herb-paris, set in a cross, are quite distinctive. Rising from the middle, an upright stem bears a flower: a star of four narrow, yellow-green petals and four green sepals, topped by a dark berry (ovary) and a crown of eight golden stamens. Herb-paris is a perennial plant of damp woodlands, mainly on chalky soils, and its crown of understated, green flowers can be found blooming among Bluebells and Primroses in May and June. With its whorl of four egg-shaped leaves, it is known as the 'herb of equality' because all of its parts are considered equal and harmonious. This symmetry appealed to medieval herbalists, so it was used both in marriage rituals and to guard against witches.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 38 cm. Price £100 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Actaea racemosa
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Actaea racemosa (Black cohosh) beautiful perennial with deep green, finely divided foliage, enhanced by gracefully arching wands of fragrant white flowers in late summerand autumn. It is native to North American woodlands and the roots have a history of medicinal use having sedative and anti-inflammatory properties and as treatment for the symptoms of menopause.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 19 x 28 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Adiantum aleuticum two small fronds
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Adiantum aleuticum two small fronds (Western Maidenhair Fern) is a deciduous or semi-evergreen, perennial fern with graceful, bright green fronds which open like the fingers of a hand atop upright, shiny, purple-black wiry stems. Each finger is further divided into a series of triangular segments.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 19 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Adiantum aleuticum single frond
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Adiantum aleuticum single frond (Western Maidenhair Fern) is a deciduous or semi-evergreen, perennial fernwith graceful, bright green fronds which open like the fingers of a hand atop upright, shiny, purple-black wiry stems. Each finger is further divided into a series of triangular segments.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 28 x 19 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Hyacinthoides non-scripta
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Hyacinthoides non-scripta (Bluebells) usually deep violet-blue in colour, bluebells are bell-shaped with six petals and up-turned tips. These sweet-smelling flowers nod or droop to one side of the flowering stem (known as an inflorescence) and have creamy white-coloured pollen inside. Some bluebell flowers can be white or pink. Up to 20 flowers can grow on one inflorescence. Bluebells are native to Western Europe with the UK being a species stronghold. They're associated with ancient woodland and are often used in combination with other species as a clue that a wood is ancient. They reach their greatest densities in the UK’s woods where many thousands of bulbs can exist in one woodland, creating the incredible blue carpets we fondly associate with spring. They also grow along hedgerows and in fields.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 19 x 28 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Eleutherococcus sieboldianus
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Eleutherococcus sieboldianus (Five-fingered Aralia) is a spiny deciduous shrub of lax, scrambling habit, with bright green leaves divided into about seven lance-shaped segments, and greenish-white flowers in late spring and early summer. Its leaves are divided into five leaflets, attached like fingers in a hand and creating a fine-textured, airy effect.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 19 x 28 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Fern I
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Fern I (class Polypodiopsida), class of nonflowering vascular plants that possess true roots, stems, and complex leaves and that reproduce by spores. The number of known extant fern species is about 10,500, but estimates have ranged as high as 15,000, the number varying because certain groups are as yet poorly studied and because new species are still being found in unexplored tropical areas. The ferns constitute an ancient division of vascular plants, some of them as old as the Carboniferous Period (beginning about 358.9 million years ago) and perhaps older. Their type of life cycle, dependent upon spores for dispersal, long preceded the seed-plant life cycle.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 19 x 28 cm. Price £50 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Smyrnium perfoliatum
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Smyrnium perfoliatum (Perfoliate alexanders) is an upright biennial with stout, ribbed stems, green basal leaves up to 20cm long, and shorter, bright, yellow-green upper leaves joined to surround the stem. Open sprays of tiny, yellow-green flowers are produced in the second spring.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 19 x 14 cm. Price £25 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Wollemia nobilis
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Wollemia nobilis (Wollemi pine) Evergreen coniferous tree with needle-like leaves. Light green, young leaves become a yellowish-dark green colour with age. The bark has a rough surface and branches bear cones. Male and female cones occur on the same tree; female cones appear on higher branches and are much more rounded than the narrow male cones. Seeds are paper thin, winged, and brown. The extraordinary wollemi pine dates back to the time of the dinosaurs. This living fossil was thought to be extinct for two million years until a small population was discovered in the Blue Mountains of Australia in 1994. Today, the species is critically endangered and restricted to fewer than 100 trees in Wollemi National Park, Australia.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 14 x 19 cm. Price £25 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Fern II
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Fern II (class Polypodiopsida), class of nonflowering vascular plants that possess true roots, stems, and complex leaves and that reproduce by spores. The number of known extant fern species is about 10,500, but estimates have ranged as high as 15,000, the number varying because certain groups are as yet poorly studied and because new species are still being found in unexplored tropical areas. The ferns constitute an ancient division of vascular plants, some of them as old as the Carboniferous Period (beginning about 358.9 million years ago) and perhaps older. Their type of life cycle, dependent upon spores for dispersal, long preceded the seed-plant life cycle.
Image details: original wet cyanotype photogram created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size 14 x 19 cm. Price £25 including worldwide postage and packing. |
Set of four small prints
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Set of four small prints:
This set of four small original cyanotypes would look great together in a single frame or alternatively frame individually and hang as a collection. Thalictrum delavayi Splendide White (Meadow rue) a mass of small, pure white, cup-shaped flowers form a big, frothy plume that graceful sit on stiff stems above mid-green leaves. Blooms for a long time. Seselia libanotis (Moon carrot) is a biennial or short-lived perennial with finely divided, dark green leaves and erect stems bearing umbels of tiny, white flowers in summer. Eleutherococcus sieboldianus (Five-fingered Aralia) is a spiny deciduous shrub of lax, scrambling habit, with bright green leaves divided into about seven lance-shaped segments, and greenish-white flowers in late spring and early summer. Its leaves are divided into five leaflets, attached like fingers in a hand and creating a fine-textured, airy effect. Smyrnium perfoliatum (Perfoliate alexanders) is an upright biennial with stout, ribbed stems, green basal leaves up to 20cm long, and shorter, bright, yellow-green upper leaves joined to surround the stem. Open sprays of tiny, yellow-green flowers are produced in the second spring. Image details: original wet cyanotype photograms created using soap suds and diluted white vinegar producing beautiful fluid background textures. Created on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper, paper size for each print 9.5 x 14 cm. Price £50 for the set of four including worldwide postage and packing. (Prints are loose and unmounted and will be packaged together in a cellophane wallet) |
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Pack of five blank greetings cards:
My five favourite prints from the collection are now available as a pack of five cards. They have been professionally printed to a high standard on 300 gsm FSC certified card with a silk finish on the outside and matt finish inside. Card size is 5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8 cm). The cards will be packed in a single cellophane bag but if you prefer I can package them without the plastic just add a note to your order. They can also be gift wrapped if required. Price £10 for the pack including UK postage and packing. International postage charges will be applied to your order. The designs are: Chaerophyllum hirsutum 'Roseum' Paris quadrifolia Osmunda regalis Maianthemum racemosum Molopospermum peloponnesiacum |
All Images © Jill Welham 2021. All rights reserved.
