Bloedel Reserve Special



Editor's Letter

Hello and welcome to this very special edition of Veg Plotting. Our final day's Fling in Seattle was spent in The Bloedel Reserve. We took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island (a treat in itself) whereupon the marvellously warm and sunny weather we'd been enjoying refused to come and play and we finally got a taste of the rain which the Pacific North West is famous for.

In addition to having exclusive blogger access to the Reserve on a day it's not usually open to the public, we were also treated to the wit and wisdom of David Perry who kindly agreed to provide 3 mini-photography workshops spread across the day in order to accommodate us all. There's lots more to come in later posts, but for now I'll just say that David's challenge to us was to pretend we were on assignment for a magazine and come up with the all important front cover shot, a story plus the photographs needed as illustration.

Today's post forms the first part of my response to that assignment: the front cover of my 'magazine', plus its contents page. As you can see magical Bloedel has many stories to tell, some of which will be added to this blog over the next few weeks. Their links will be added to the list below (and show up in brown) as and when they appear on Veg Plotting.

I'd really like to mock up one or two of these to look like proper magazine pages, but I don't think I have the software around to enable me to do this. If you know of anything (preferably free) which can be used for this purpose, do leave the details in the comments below.

I hope you enjoy what's to come: rest assured I won't be exclusively blogging about Seattle over the next few weeks. There'll be a mixture of the usual stories too :)

Until the next time,

VP

Contents

On the Cover

Plants and Design
  • The Devil's in the Detail The tiny accents which caught our eye
  • Reflections of Bloedel A very different view of the Reserve
  • A Rolling Stone... ...gathers lots of moss in this most unusual part of the garden

People
  • Sneak Peek Our intrepid Fling organisers' trip to The Bloedel Reserve last May
  • Behind the scenes What it takes to keep Bloedel in tip top condition
  • Bloedel and other stories As told by Seattle's Flingers across the world wide web

Regulars
  • Editor's Letter
  • Contributor
  • Readers' Comments Your chance to share your thoughts on this most magical of places, ask questions, or just have your say [do add yours below - Ed]
  • Garden Bloggers' Muse Day A thought provoking quote courtesy of Prentice Bloedel
  • Out on the Streets Our summer look at what's hot - or not - in the world of public planting
  • Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day A spiky visitor is found up at the plot
  • Book Reviews Helen Babbs' tale of a novice gardener on a tiny London rooftop was among the new releases up for grabs in Seattle
  • Crossword B*gger!
  • Classifieds See the right hand sidebar for our current sponsors
  • Next Issue What's coming up in September

Comments

  1. VP19 August 2011 at 14:21

    PS As a BBC Insider I'm sometimes asked to comment on potential magazine covers and choose my favourite (and least!)one from those presented.

    It's been a lot of fun imagining I'm on the other side of the fence and designing my own 'front cover'.

    I've always said that Veg Plotting is the magazine I'd like to read!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Helen19 August 2011 at 14:52

    Well done, you. I have yet to tackle my photo assignment. And interestingly your description of Veg Plotting is exactly how Sarah and I imagined Toronto Gardens. Better get cracking, me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mr. McGregor's Daughter19 August 2011 at 15:34

    Good job with the first part of the assignment. I think you're on to something by breaking the Bloedel excursion down into different stories. It was just so big, and so varied.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Diana Studer19 August 2011 at 20:13

    I know Donna at Garden Walk Garden Talk regularly posts in magazine format. Perhaps she could help you?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anna19 August 2011 at 21:37

    A most effective photo cover VP ~ that path invites you into the pages.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous20 August 2011 at 05:18

    Now I know what you wanted to do! There are many magazine mockup sites out there. http://www.magcover.com/ is one of them. I do not use any, but the shelter blog crowd does. You can pick from like 100 different covers of real magazines or make your own with some. Just Google magazine cover templates. Many are free. Or if you need help, I can assist.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Juliet20 August 2011 at 23:53

    What a fun idea, and I do like your chosen cover shot. Issuu might be suitable for you to use to make a real online magazine.

    ReplyDelete
  8. VP21 August 2011 at 08:49

    Helen - how well your imagining works over at Toronto Gardens Looking forward to seeing what you come up with having had a sneak peek at your photos :)

    MMD - David's talk crystalised some of the musings I'd had about writing about garden visits. Too often the story I choose to tell is about the visit and showing off everything (and the best pics off course). I often feel that these posts are far too wrong. David 'gave me permission' to tell the story in far fewer photos. How many of these pieces get told remains to be seen, but the intention is to try and do all the cover stories at least, especially as 2 of them will have lots of hints and tips about photography that should be of general interest.

    EE - thanks for putting me in touch with Donna :)

    Anna - that's why I chose that photo (and what I had in mind when I took it). Personally I think the landscape shot I took afterwards is better, but that wouldn't have been suitable for the purpose.

    gardenwalkgardentalk - welcome and thanks for coming over and having a look at what I'm up to Donna! I'm looking for something for magazine inside pages rather than the cover, so I took your advice and Googled. The top search return was for some software I've had to trial but hadn't got around to installing. In fact I'd forgotten I had it! So I actually had the answer here at home all along ;)

    Juliet - that looks most useful but I think I need to put the content together before I can use the application. It looks like that will be a fun project to play with for the winter once I've got to grips with the other software :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. VP21 August 2011 at 08:51

    oops - my comment to MMD should read far too long, not wrong!

    ReplyDelete

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