I took a recent visit to the Hepworth Garden in Wakefield, Yorkshire early on a promising summer morning to get some photography of the maturing landscaped gardens. Before the landscaping by garden designer Tom Stuart Smith began in 2019 this area next the Hepworth Gallery was just a patch of uninspiring grass. Now the concrete paths and large swathes of planting create a free to access public garden that links the spaces between the gallery and the Victorian Rutland Mills buildings, all situated on the banks of the River Calder. 

One of the great things about the garden is that it makes a beautiful foreground for the Hepworth Gallery and in response, the concrete facade of the gallery makes a great backdrop for the garden and planting. As a garden photographer based in Yorkshire this is one of the most famous gardens in the area – known for being freely accessible at all hours of the day – it’s one of the few beautifully designed and maintained gardens you can visit at all times of the day – morning, noon or night. Of course, garden photography is usually best when the sun is low in the sky after sunrise or before sunset and so sunrise was my chosen time for these photographs. The added advantage with photographing public garden at sunrise is that there tends not to be so many people around – especially in the middle of summer! 

Some of these shots are taken with a drone, which is so useful for getting high enough to show the overarching design of a garden which can otherwise be a bit lost in photographs.