Exbury Nerines
The glittering petals of the Rothschild jewel lilies and the wild autumn art of Peter Thwaites combine in Exbury’s Five Arrows Gallery from this week to bring a colourful month-long show to the New Forest Gardens.
Artist Peter Thwaites finds the subjects for his watercolours of mushrooms and other fungi in the 200 acre Gardens and these will form the core of his exhibition with paintings of berries and other autumn subjects as well.
The Dorset-based watercolourist’s reputation for portraying fungi is such that he has been commissioned to illustrate guides and posters on the subject and to display work at the International Mycological Congress.
His work, alongside the sparkling hues of the famous Rothschild ‘jewel lilies’ (Nerine sarniensis), bred from plants first brought to Exbury in the 1920s by Lionel de Rothschild, brings a special ‘wow factor’ to this popular annual exhibition. The nerines, in colours ranging from dusky purple to scarlet and plummy red, to sugar pink, are displayed under lights so that their sparkling petals are thrown into sharp focus.
More colour blazes outside as acres of trees take on their fiery autumn hues throughout the 200 acre woodland Gardens.
October is the month when hundreds of acers, dogwoods, deciduous azaleas and other trees begin to flame crimson, orange, yellow and deep purple as the miles of pathways in the great woodland garden are made bright with carpets of fallen leaves.
All details may be found on www.exbury.co.uk.
“Wherever you look in the Gardens at this time of the year, you’ll be rewarded with a brilliant show of colour,” said Nicholas de Rothschild, whose family runs the world-famous Gardens on the banks of the Beaulieu River in Hampshire.
The exhibition opens on September 27 and run until the Gardens close for the season on November 6.
Please go to www.exbury.co.uk for more details.
