Our Garden in Watercolor
This week, I tell about our garden and share my watercolor paintings that have been influenced by it.
We create something like this in the course Wild Garden!
We bought our current house in the fall of 2011. We had had small terraced yards before so at first, we didn’t pay much attention to the yard and mostly focused on the house.
However, the big lawn slowly turned into a garden when my husband and I started adding plants.
See how I made this!
And now when I look back at my art years later, plants slowly started to take over there too. We bought the house, but it was the surrounding yard that changed us.
See how I made this!
Big Changes
My husband really got into gardening and in 2018 he made his long-time dream come true when the front yard was transformed into a Japanese garden.
In 2023, the backyard got a bigger makeover when my husband built a pond and the boring lawn was transformed into a pergola with English-style plantings and meadows.
See how I made this!
We create something like this in the course Wild Garden!
Local Nature and Watercolor
The words “English” or “Japanese” don’t describe our garden as well as “forest” and “water.” Our garden is a mix of external influences and Finnish nature. We have pines, birches, and wild flowers too.
We create something like this in the course Wild Garden!
There is water – not only in a pond loved by small birds – but we also have a stone water bowl “tsukubai”, and an imaginary water area built of sand.
See how I made this!
Our garden has a couple of berry bushes, strawberries for birds, two apple trees and a cherry tree, but it cannot be called a vegetable garden.
See how I made this!
See how I made this!
The front yard is dominated by conifers and flowers such as a huge hydrangea and many peonies and roses. The backyard has grasses and flowering perennials.
See how I made this!
See how I made this!
Garden in Watercolor
The garden is my husband’s artwork, but for me, weeding and planting is not enough, I need brushes.
See how I made this!
By painting, the story of a place changes to a more personal story. Rather than accurately sketching the specific locations, we should let nature immerse in us, and then express its beauty freely.
Wild Garden – Paint with Me!
In the upcoming course Wild Garden we will paint flowers freely, intuitively, and expressively in watercolor. Sign up here!
Wild Garden will begin on September 22, 2025. Sign up now!
2 thoughts on “Our Garden in Watercolor”
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Inspiring paintings and garden! My husband and I often go out plein air sketching/painting with a group, and my favorite days are the ones when we go to places filled with trees and flowers and dappled light. Sometimes the result is half sketch, half imagination. Looking forward to Wild Garden!
Thank you, Melinda! That sounds like fun: half sketch, half imagination. I hope you’ll love Wild Garden!