One Year of Plants
An abstract view of a desert plant at the Desert Botanic Garden.
Written by Sarah Marino
I am happy to be sharing a new portfolio, both as a free PDF ebook (no sign-up required to download) and as a web-based gallery. This portfolio represents one year (2025) of photographing plants. Seeking out plants in wild places, cultivated gardens, and the places in between is one of the important threads in my photographic practice. I see plants as the gateway to learning more about my surroundings and getting to know a place's plants has become an essential part of learning about and connecting with the landscapes I visit. This portfolio is my way of sharing these experiences.
Within the full portfolio, the photos are organized to flow mostly by color, so some pairings include, for example, a fern photographed in New Zealand, an autumnal wild raspberry leaf photographed twenty minutes from home, and a sprig of delicate wormwood growing in my yard (above). This is one of the things I enjoy most about photographing plants. I can see similarities across ecosystems, like a patch of mosses or ferns growing halfway around the world from one another, and gain a better understanding of both places in the process.
Photo locations include the following places:
- UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden
- Yosemite National Park
- Death Valley National Park and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge
- Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association Garden
- Desert Botanic Garden
- Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
- Denver Botanic Gardens
- Gunnison National Forest
- My perennial garden in southwestern Colorado
- Uncompahgre National Forest
- The South Island of New Zealand (Aotearoa --- Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Paparoa National Park, Westland Tai Poutini National Park, Fiordlands National Park, and Aoraki Mount Cook National Park).
You can view a few of my favorite photos below. If you would like to see the full collection, you can download the PDF ebook here and the web gallery here.
I photographed this beautiful euphorbia plant at the Denver Botanic Gardens. It is considered an invasive nonnative across much of the western US because it outcompetes native plants with prolific seed production and fast growth. It is prohibited in some communities and many nurseries refuse to sell it so I am always surprised to see these plants growing in botanic gardens. Although the complex flower structures are beautiful, I find this stage to be my favorite. Composition inspired by Taylor Picard.
Silvery leaves on a plant growing at the Desert Botanic Garden in Arizona.
New growth on a blue spruce sedum plant in my backyard garden.
These seed heads are just as beautiful as the flowers that proceeded them. Denver Botanic Gardens.
A close-up view of an ocotillo growing in the wild in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California.
Spikes on a cactus looking graceful under soft light and shallow focus. Anza-Borrego Natural History Association Botanic Garden, California.
A tall and lanky species of buckwheat (possibly flatcrown buckwheat or Eriogonum deflexum) well after its bloom, found in Death Valley National Park.
A thick understory of ferns growing along the Kepler Track in Fiordlands National Park on the South Island of New Zealand.
A patch of Solomon's seal (Polygonatum multiflorum 'Variegatum') growing at the Denver Botanic Gardens.
A mix of mosses and liverworts growing near the Ōkārito Lagoon in Westland Tai Poutini National Park. South Island of New Zealand.
A patch of liverworts growing in Westland Tai Poutini National Park on the South Island of New Zealand. New Zealand is home to more than 500 species of liverworts, including this one.
Tiny clusters of what will eventually become large flowers on a golden Spaniard plant (Aciphylla aurea) growing in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park on New Zealand's South Island.
