Frankly, that shot did not wow me. I like a garden to look passionate and personal, a bit untidy and full of many different plants and colors. A homogeneous vista of pastel perfection is not my cup of tea. Besides, where the hell are the roses?

Considering that all the plants in the photo are in containers it's plausable that the photo isn't photoshopped? They were probably all grown in greenhouses under different conditions. Could they all be growing in the ground together? No way! The most current trend is AI enhanced or created photos. I've seen some crazy ones. Making orchid flowers look exactly like hummimgbirds. The monkey face orchids; sometimes I wonder how real they are? Unfortunately I don't have any AI enhanced photos. There really isn't a huge quantity of plants in the photo, it was a matter of perfect timing. Or maybe I'm wrong and it is really photodhopped?🤔 I strongly dislike the photo. It's so unnatural. I prefer to see tulips and other bulbs blooming in the wild, in the places they're endemic to. This attempt to look like Holland? Holland created that alien, false idea of what a garden should look like. The only tulips worth growing (to me) are species tulips.

I think linaria and ingrid have very good points: the issue of not having an empty spot or dying foliage (think daffodils) where Spring-flowering-bulbs are planted is a challenge and, yeah, where are the roses? I grow all kinds of bulbs right along with my roses! Homogeny was never on my radar; I was very surprised to find that's what my bf likes. lol, no wonder he is seldom impressed with my garden of variety galore.

She has videos of her roses on the website, so they must be there somewhere on the property.

First of all 20 acres on San Juan Island can't come that cheap...this woman and her family had some kind of money in the first place. And then from there it's not a far jump to assuming they just bought thousands of tulips and had the help planting them. So in other words, Jay, I don't think the pics are a product of AI. (and GG said she's been there, and we believe she would not lie!) With money all things are possible. ;-) (apologies to the translators of the KJV!) I am reminded of that English Marchioness or something in the north of England, who has built a gigantic show garden in just the past 10 or 20 years IIRC. Maybe Floral or Primula will know the deets. So there are plenty of wholesale bulb companies if you want to buy 1000s at a time. And who knows maybe her website has investors, hell maybe even venture capital ones. I really hate the way this is going to sound, but it's better to just face the harsh realities of the world head on: someone could have watched Martha Stewart's cringey and tone deaf 'gardening show' on Roku, and said "we can find a younger, better looking woman and repackage this for the tiktok generation". I mean, I'm just guessing, but it doesn't seem too far fetched to me...it's more of an image driven world that ever. And she is young and attractive. Thanks GG for mentioning she contributes to charities. And btw I don't mean to say she isn't genuinely interested in the plants. I have now perused the instagram a bit more. She clearly is genuine in her love of plants.

BTW I wouldn't have though the San Juan Islands were flat and marshy as so many islands in my state (Maryland) are, but the mountain scenery in the background impressed me. Looked more like the foothills of the Cascades. Well low and behold they are pretty mountainous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Constitution

All the more reason to visit the PNW again, but, alas, it's going to be a few more years before I can leave my garden any time other than winter and briefly! Going to AU & NZ was only possible because there was a 16 year old in my neighborhood who I knew was 'raised right' and that I could hire to take care of the potted plants until I got back. My neighborhood might have run out of parents who raise their kids right LOL. Such are the times we live in.

I just had to comment because I'm also in the PNW and GG is absolutely correct that this shot is entirely possible here. I just checked FarmLuxe out on Instagram and wow, they do have lovely gardens!

Personally I love seeing commercial flower gardens both on the large scale like the tulip fields in Skagit Valley and on the small scale like here. It sounds like these are at least in part working gardens so spending the money to put in bulbs like this makes sense. Anyone who has seen the flower displays at Pike Place Market (or any of our other local markets) or spends time at the Tulip Festival will understand that we take our tulips seriously here 😄

I think it's a pretty planting and the background scenery makes it exponentially more beautiful. It is quite possible to make a big splash with tulips. I am pretty happy with my small splashes of tulips. It practically doesn't occur to me to be jealous of this garden. I do as well as I can or as well as I want to with my own garden and am more glad to have a garden than to strive for perfection in my garden. I do feel like I might get an honorable mention sometimes in the online scheme of things but most of the time it is not about that . Also there are plenty of awesome garden pics here to compare oneself to if so inclined . But for many gardening is more of a respite from strife, not still more ways to expand on strife.

This picture is almost like a Rorshach test.

I think this tulip planting is possible in many places, not just the PNW. My family took a camping trip from TX to the Olympic Peninsula in 1984 and I was very struck by the beauty of it and the flowers in home gardens. It's beautiful here in the Appalachians too and many things grow at higher elevations than the piedmont where I am. It's about ten degrees cooler up there.

Cynthia, Nippstress, has posted some impressive pics of her tulip plantings.

"... Those who live in the PNW, do you just walk around in a painting all summer? ...."

LOL that line made my day! (albeit with a bit of jealousy!)

I can't speak to how the PNW is but I believe GG when she says things like this are possible. However, I worked in the television industry (and hubby still does) and if there's one thing I know it's the existence of the art of staging. Every photo you see on social media, at least ones posted by "influencers" and their ilk, is very carefully staged. Whether it's flowers, food, or half-naked bodies. Not a detail goes unnoticed and everything is done with a purpose - to get the perfect shot. She probably took a whole roll of film - or the digital equivalent, not to sound like an old lady lol - to get that one perfect shot. Just like the shots of perfect cookies you see on a baking blog - you KNOW a dozen cookies were baked for every one perfect one in the shot!

And I wouldn't be surprised if those photos are enhanced or touched up somehow. Not saying they are photoshopped per se, but just think of all the filters available on our cheap little phones and imagine what she has available to her with a professional photographer - or if no pro, what apps she has invested in to promote her business. And understandably so!

I am not familiar with this particular farmer but I am familiar with some other flower farmers. One in particular, it looks like her farm is heaven on earth and I want to live in her website. Another, she is more real - she shows the dirt and the mud and the weeds and the failures, and talks about the voles and the hail and the deer, etc. I like both - one for the beautiful visuals and the absolutely breath-taking photos and the idealistic inspiration, and the other for her down-to-earth realism and the realistic inspiration, that still shows the beauty of flowers and gardening.

And geez, I thought we all looked that good when we're out in the garden! Don't we?

:)

Dee

P.S. This theory of mine of showing only the best in a photo is reflected in my own posts here lol. If anyone pays attention to my photos they would notice 99% of them are close-ups of a single bloom. Ain't no way I'm showing wide shots of my messy garden! And when I bring a bouquet into work, which I often do, they see the blooms and all I hear is "oh my goodness, your garden must be gorgeous!" I just say thank you and snort to myself. If they only knew.....

I haven't been to the PNW, but I have seen impressive tuip display. In Holland- Michigan. They have a tulip fest in the spring and it is amazing with all the flowers in bloom. A guy started off with a few hundred bulbs in the 50's, and it turned into a whole town thing. Pretty area, it has a lot of good thrift shops too.

The garden center my mom works for has a ”seasonal garden” program for the ultra rich folks. They do full garden renovations several times a year - putting in whatever is currently blooming and removing whatever just bloomed. Think large, mature shrubs being hauled in and out like cheap annuals.

Personally I find it a bit horrifying, its clearly not a gardening plan made with the health of the plants prioritized. But I think it does explain the too perfect look of some garden pictures.

Tulips are pretty cheap, tbf. I spend around $80 per 1000 bulbs (I go for 100 of various varieties) and usually add around 300 or so most years. Where they grow - under vastly looming grey skies in the flattest part of the UK, is less picturesque. I plant mine up at 100 per m2, so 3000 bulbs does not occupy a huge space and represents an outlay of $250ish. I grow a lot of tulips because the foliage does not hang around for weeks looking grim - can usually be chopped back within a coupla weeks of the bulbs going over.

But yep, I just stopped looking at internet or media-driven garden pics which feature an army of volunteers and carefully lit photos, arranged just so. A bit like the hateful Chelsea (gods, how I despise the whole show garden fandango), most stuff which has been mediated, edited and arranged does not reflect any sort of feasible reality...in fact, I often feel it is a symptom of a world I don't recognise - heavily capitalised, monetised, primped, pimped and promoted as aspirational 'buy this' tactics based on shame and envy.

I personally think they are growing in pots, that’s why the logs in front to hide them. And the tall connifers in the back is a dead give away, maybe they add that in somehow to make it idealistic.

I’ve seen fields of tulips in Holland, in fact i took tons of pictures and they were not one i could use for photos, they were in the plain field.

This is how they are grown in KeuKenhof

i personally planted 2000 tulip bulbs at one time to celebrate year 2000, you can buy them in bulk, they are not that expensive, but they are one and done. This is why i dont grow them again.

I’m in the PNW and yes tulips and other blooms are wonderful in spring. June-Sept anything that isn’t drought resistant is dry and brown, unless massively irrigated. At least in my area.

You can see those beds in the first scene of this post, with irrigation lines in place. https://www.instagram.com/p/CjL7q8fjBrQ/

I don't see what the mystery is. They are just densely planted and long lens photography is being used to compress the foreground. Yes, it's meant to create a certain contrived look, obviously. She got people talking about her, that was the point!

Yesterday while Amara was sunbathing in the yard, we watched my neighbor and her friend haul two huge perfect domed pots of mums from the car to her flower bed. She always buys an instant garden - nursery plants that have been raised under ideal conditions. Her place is an immaculate show garden where passing cars actually stop and people gaze at the flower spectacle.

It's definitely a science to flower farm, and major expense goes into it. If I had property, a work crew, loads of investment cash, and all that is needed to make a luxury garden, I would be depriving myself of all the benefits of struggling against the odds.

I follow some farmers and they admit they get a lot of revenues from youtube, that's how they can claim they made a profit after 5 years.

Close inspection shows numerous seed pods where the flowers have gone over. Not quite as perfect as it seems at first glance.

I definitely looks beautiful. Like GG mentioned she has twenty acres so she can have a patch of tulips like this in the spring and another patch or something else in the summer and so on. Spring is certainly an impressive and glorious time for many gardens. Many of the gardens from the members here look that glorious when in bloom. For example look at Diane’s glorious roses and front garden arch in full flush and you will know what I am talking about and she doesn’t have a gardening crew (that I know of 😉tho it looks like she must because it is glorious).

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6283771/julia-child-rose-not-impressed-am-i-alone

It is more beautiful than any tulips.

I myself made a small garden book from some of my best pictures and printed them out since I have removed my original garden. It looks magical to me because they were all good angles when the roses were looking fresh.

Those who get to look at it always say it looks like a garden from a southern living magazine (but it was only during the spring) the rest of the season the plants defoliated from blackspot and the blooms got eaten by Japanese beetles and so on. This lady has the good fortune of gardening in a very nice location and having the means and resources to really have it looking its best.

I do not look at social media posts because I despise much of it but I do subscribe to the English Garden magazine 🤩and WOW there is A LOT that can be achieved with lots of money, man power and work. I wish her the best!

The best thing to do is garden within your means and when you get a bit of envy just realize that is just a very human emotion, move on and appreciate what you have.

I think the back half is tulips in the ground. I think the front half is either tulips in buckets, or are photoshopped into the pic. My question since yesterday is how did they get Pamela Anderson from 30 years ago in the pic :-D

The entire thing looks fake to me, and completely photoshopped. The perspective of the background is completely "off".

" The perspective of the background is completely "off". "

A statement from someone who has apparently never visited the San Juan Islands :-) It looks exactly like that!!

Grief, this is all getting a bit lairy. I really don't think it is either fake or photoshopped but really, what does it matter? This is from an instagram post which is totally all about selling a lifestyle/product/image and of course, it will be posed and lit because it is all about the spectacle. This is media-world...and a single edited moment. Any of us could post a similar photo of perfection (well not me, obvs) but it wouldn't really represent anything more than that precise moment when the camera was cunningly placed and we had removed any blemishes, unsightly objects, faded plants, fallen leaves, weeds and so on.

This isn't why we are gardening though, is it? We accept our fails (cos we learn from them) and revel in our triumphs. It is a long and sometimes painful process...not a glossy image on a screen.

And, from what I understand, it is practically a crop, destined for the cut-flower market...in which case, this field will look completely different in a week or so...when we won't be seeing the photos. It's a lot of work, for sure.

Gardengal,I've never visited the San Juan islands, true enough. But I don't know another word for what I meant by "perspective", It's like a visual thing, like when you're watching a movie or something and you can tell when a scene has been filmed on a set or a digitalized background or in a real location. Of course the people who make movies are much, much better at doing it than is the person who took this picture,and it's much harder to see. Being a painter, I tend to notice this sort of thing...

I agree with the title of the thread, that’s it. Yes, I think i’ve vacationed at SJ islands years ago. I’m also a painter, my daughter is a movie director, she did show me a few tricks.

i also understand we like to dream, in my generation, it’s Martha Stewart. BTW, she still looks hot, lol lol.

@User I expanded the photo and I see exactly what you are talking about. Like blue [background] screen in film. The line of in-focus tulips in the back, in front of the trees, is too perfectly precise. I use Adobe Photoshop at work and this reminds me of exactly that. I'm not saying the background is fake; only that it's a separate photo; "layer" as it's called in Photoshop. The tulips are another photo/layer, maybe even multiple photos/layers, to re-create the scene.

Now that I look at the photo again, I can't un-see how clear the separate layers are. O.o I am very sorry to say, I think this "photo" is actually multiple photos created to look as one in Photoshop.

Btw, I never Photoshop any photos that I post here.

Whatever part of the garden this photo was taken, I did not see in the video. She is sitting among logs not stones, but from what I can tell the areas with log-lined-beds won't have that background as in her photo. This is some geometric gymnastics to try and figure out where she is sitting.

My partner is a trained photographer and she says this is done with a telephoto lens and that the background is the same as the last photo @Sharon z8b Texas posted from the video. She does this kind of photography all the time, even in her own garden, to force perspective. She does this a lot when she takes garden photos to compress everything and make it look nicer, especially in the front yard but almost anytime she’s taking photos of more than one flower or one bush.

Yes, just like I mentioned much earlier, " They are just densely planted and long [aka telephoto!] lens photography is being used to compress the foreground. " There were many pictures like this taken for travel magazines in the past decades, WELL before AI or even photoshop!

I don't see why anyone would need to fake it. You can grow tulips like this if you have the space , money, time, etc. and not just in the PNW.

@BenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14) If ya'll aren't out here dressed to the nines in Trixie Mattel amounts of makeup while gardening, I don't know what ya'll are doing. 😂

I think the reason for "faking it" is obvious: people gain revenue from clicks/views. Prettier photos lead to more clicks/views, leads to more money.

Magpie,

I honestly believe she accomplishes all this beauty single-handedly, while subsisting on a single homegrown organic blueberry per day. Once in a while she allows herself a cheat day, and garnishes the tiny fruit with an appropriately sized mint leaf. Then the big dilemma becomes whether that mint leaf may be consumed, or only admired as a decoration.

Ben, I don't know about single-handedly. I think she sings a pitch-perfect tune and all the nearby woodland animals come to help her. We should give credit where it's due.

They are pretty pictures. I want to see the woodland animals, too.

My show would be called CrunchyChic and maybe if you're lucky you'd see me with brushed hair and sunscreen on. Lots of dirt on my well used overalls.

I read through this entire thread of comments & had many laughs. I live in PNW but am not familiar with farm luxe. My first take on pic was - oh, this is up North in La Connor area where the annual tulip festival takes place. Then I looked at all the hills & firs in background & thought - no, it’s somewhere west on the Olympic Peninsula / San Juans or somewhere like that. Then I’m looking at slopes & thinking - maybe south of WA & in OR somewhere that they also have tulip festivals. My point? There are so many different views of what exists in the PNW between the Olympic Mountains at the west end of WA state with all the islands and deep forrests & the Cascade Moutains on the mid eastern side of state before crossing those mountains into the high desert east part of PNW. In other words, we have it all!! And, we do have many tulips in many areas. I will personally attest to the fact that not many of us look like the woman in the picture when we are out working in our beloved gardens. My neighbor remarked to me at a recent neighborhood gathering - ” You’re wearing a skirt! I almost didn’t recognize you without your hat and gloves on!” But, on a more serious note, I will say that we also have been experiencing more heat domes / higher temps & more poor air quality days over the past few years just as I’m sure you all have been in whatever geographic location you are in. Climate change? It’s a real thing.

sharon Texas, thanks for those stills, they explain a lot,

not exyactly cheating, a very smart way to build a picture or scenery, definetely not working with the native soil.

I just read this thread....very entertaining. lol

Well I'm with @BenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14) on this. And she is clearly not going to Heaven. God couldn't let anybody in until they have dirt under their fingernails and arms scratched up from thorns and holes in their socks, and a garden boots with the sole duct-taped or tied on so it stops flapping while walking around to dig holes for plants we cannot afford, nor have the space for, nor have the right conditions but hope with all of our hearts that those things aren't really all that important really. :)

But yeah, enough money, great editing, telescope photos, and a constant backdrop that she did not plant or design (the forest, water, etc.) does help a bit.

Random tidbit.... Martha Stewart debuted her TV show 30 years ago this month. Some folks thought it was all fake too, only there wasn't digital enhancement back then like there is now. It was staging and good filming on a planned and well groomed property. (Yes, it went to set later, it debuted on property) Martha was an early influencer, she sold the beauty and clean ease of "it's a good thing". We bought into it, envied it, wanted to do it- thought it was over the top, too much too fussy, no one can be that clean with that life, ect.

What Misha is doing now isn't really any different. She is an influencer, selling the beauty and clean ease of flower farming. We don't get to see her crew and messy gardens, just like we didn't see Martha's crew or messy gardens. It's selling the image of one person can do it all, with grace and perfect hair. Seems like some folks are buying into it now just like some folks bought into Martha's perfect decades ago.

Misha is doing media like Martha. It's some different media now than 30 years ago. Martha had to hook up with a show producer to have a TV show- now it can be done online without a production company. Misha sells the TV show on her site. Misha has released a book- paper magazines aren't as much of a thing, but digital ones are like instagram. So the free magazine on instagram will hopefully drive revenue to her website.

"Ben, I don't know about single-handedly. I think she sings a pitch-perfect tune and all the nearby woodland animals come to help her. We should give credit where it's due. "

That's pretty funny, Magpie. Yeah, it does look a bit much like heaven .

What's with the word, " influencer"? I'm hearing it a lot all of a sudden. I like to think everyone is an influencer.

It‘s as real as this, this popped up when i logged on to my facebook this morning, lol lol.

@erasmus_gw an "influencer" is basically someone who has a big enough following in their field (think someone with a few hundred thousand followers on their channel or something) who posts digital content about whatever their thing is: makeup, gardening stuff, lifestyle, etc. A lot of popular makeup influencers, for instance, get sent a lot of free product from makeup companies hoping that the next tutorial video will feature their brand. So basically, influencers are human marketing tools used to promote products in a more "personal" way than just an ad on the TV. And it absolutely works on people, it's been very successful, marketing-wise. The intention, I believe, is to take advantage of the "parasocial relationship" phenomenon.

Also you asked me to update on a few things we chatted about much earlier in the year and now I can: The brown eyed susans did in fact reseed everywhere, and out of 18 cells of salpiglossis, I only got one plant to survive. I had a very hard time getting them to grow from seed. But the one plant I have is doing really well. :)

Aha! That's a good explanation of an influencer. I kind of thought it had something to do with some larger entity using the influencer to sell something. Everywhere you look it seems like human nature to elevate certain people and make them a little larger than life. It's not just imposed by corporations...it's what people seem to like to do. Make little gurus out of some people.

Whether the above pic is fake or not there is plenty of money and help behind this vision.

The brown eyed Susans are very adaptable, tough plants here and they are a bit aggressive in my garden. But they look great to me massed and though the color may not be my favorite the plant is so good I plan to transplant some so I have more of a mass of them near my mailbox. Once it cools off. Salpiglossis has a beautiful flower. I doubt I'll try it again because it was fussy and didn't bloom long.

Sadly here, I have trouble keeping browneyed Susans going. Something is not good for them here.

That is a shame, Sheila, as they're so lovely in late summer. How is your garden doing lately?

Magpie, we just got .5 inches of rain and temps have cooled off from 90s. This summer we had just 5 days 100 F and over which is an improvement. My asters are almost blooming. The roses are making new growth, so I think we will have a good Fall flush. We had weeks and weeks of heat.

I will need to get roses rescued from gopher root eating into the ground in wire baskets this Fall. I'm still fighting the gophers, stem girdler and rose borers. So 3 steps forward 2 steps back.

Sheila: please send some of your weather my way!!! Pretty, pretty, please with cherries on top (or whatever your favorite fruit may be)???

We just got a cold front... so the temps went down to 100F. And scientifically it's called a cold front!?! O.o The tap water is lukewarm here.

We've been the luckiest area in the lower 48 all summer. More cloudy rainy weather and fewer 90F or above days than usual. Not a great growing season, with two months of one day a week of sunshine, but, I'll take that over day after day of 100F and above. The past two mornings it's been in the low 50s!! Back up to the mid 60s in the mornings starting tomorrow.

You know... 50's in Texas is called "winter". As in mid-winter! Send that my way, please! I will send you whatever your favorite fruit is!!! Just send that weather over along with a PM of your favorite fruit! I will find you whatever fruit you want! Starfruit? Soursop? Jackfruit? Specialty persimmon? You send that weather my way along with an address and I will make whatever fruit you name appear at your doorstep!

LOL!! Yes, I see you there in Texas on the weather map every time we watch a forecast and think you POOR people!! I don't know how you do it. One of our kids has been traveling and it's been very hot where they've been every day and they are coming home today. They can't wait!

I also think when I see the weather map of the country and it's all in orange everywhere, that sooner or later that is going to be us too. And it used to be all the tornados were in Tornado Alley in the middle of the country, but we have been having tornadoes touch down during storms now and actually doing some damage. That never happened in the first 50 years of my life. They say the alley has shifted location now.

We have had summers with 3x more 90 - 100F days than we used to, and by August our tapwater was lukewarm too. Just not this summer. I have been trying to address drought for the past 5 years and this year I've had full rain barrels all summer going unused because of all the rain.

I am curious, when you can expect your temperatures to cool down? Your winters sound pretty nice! [g] How long is a winter there? We expect to have two months of pretty nice weather now before winter. We can get hot days but it usually always cools off at night at least. But it also is hurricane season and some years we get hit with multiple hurricanes. We're often right in a direct path from Florida. We used to always look forward to snow in the winter, but we haven't been getting a lot in recent years. Last year we only had to hire snow removal once all winter. That is unheard of. I miss the snow.