Wolves Wild

Flowers on one of the lilies in Westgate Park at Canterbury. As I was taking the pictures, a small fly landed, prospecting for pollen.

A herring gull marches across a patch of short grass in the Westgate Gardens riverside park, Canterbury.

Not far away, a lesser black backed gull gets a good vantage point on one of the highest points of the cathedral.

Within the enclosed space which forms the Cathedral Close at Canterbury, the gardens displayed a variety of flowers. A lone pyramidal orchid was flowering in the middle of one of the lawns of the cathedral itself.

The yellow-flowered red hot poker, a variant I’d never even heard of before, was in a garden on the other side of the ring road. Everything else here was within the precinct.

Purple salsify is another species I’d never heard of before. Around the west midlands salsify is quite a common wild flower – jack go to bed at noon, with yellow flowers which close around mid-day. This garden plant was my first introduction to the purple species. A few days later, I noticed it was one of the many plants growing as a wild flower on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve (pictures soon).

Stinking iris seemed to be quite a popular choice in the parks and gardens we came across around Canterbury. One had a plant with flowers which had crinkled petals: a hybrid of some kind.

The Great Stour as it flows through Canterbury. Most pictures were taken in the popular Westgate Gardens – the West Gate can be seen in one shot, with a bed of canterbury bells flowering in the foreground. At least one view is of another arm of the river from the quieter Greyfriars Gardens.

This spiky plant, native only far to the south of the African continent, was flowering and flourishing by one of the lawns of Canterbury Cathedral, and immediately caught the eye.