Wild About Here

Celebrating nature's beauty in fine art prints, botanical tales, accessories with botanical art photography by Kriss MacDonald.

Wild About Here is a blog about nature adventures and living creatively with camera, kids, recipes & books. I’m a mother, photographer, blogger, journalist, cook and dreamer. I’m British and American thus both Mum and Mom to my fraternal twins.

11/07/2026

Quiet moments with tea, notebook, fresh and dried flowers at my botanical desk in my studio… Who else has found the early summer heat wave has affected blooming times? This year I’m still waiting for my Rudbeckia to grow and flourish (like in the past - image 2), although the Hibiscus and Echinacea are showing up.

I’ve been trying to balance fixing the garden irrigation as the garden needs extra water in the summer, growing flowers from seed, family visits to see my mother ( she lives in our garden cottage and has needed lots of care) and more… while working behind the scenes on the launch of phone cases with my seasonal botanical photography. I’ve found the way to keep calm and handle my stress is walking the dogs and photographing the last of the wildflowers as well as heading to the gym x

26/06/2026

Often when I create my floral photography artworks I’m inspired by the seasonal colours and which to combine together - a favourite in the summer are orange and blue colours together… especially a peachy orange with a more turquoise blue… such as here with Roses, Hibiscus, and Love-in-the-Mist…and hints of pink. The colours also remind me of beautiful sunsets with the blend of orange, pink, and blue sky 🧡💕🩵

What are your favourite flower colour combinations?

Floral art, floral flatlay, garden grown flowers, colour inspiration, botanical photography.

Peaches in the garden at sunset 🧡

My new small Frangipani tree - Plumeria rubra- which I bought in the local market this week as I fell in love with the pinks, oranges, and yellows in its petals 💕🧡💛

18/06/2026

Summer collection with botanical themed books, flowers from my garden and bird nest and eggs. I’m always finding hatched eggs and little nests in our garden. The wildest nest was one I found in our cobweb brush in the garage! The last couple of weeks I’ve been making sure no car or visiting van brushes against the peach tree as there’s now European Goldfinch hatchlings in it.
1. Summer books and botanicals flatlay with nature finds and flowers from my garden
2. BIrds nest in cobweb brush!
3. June flowers including Roses, Gladiolus, honeysuckle, Love-in-the-mist, butterfly wing, bird’s nest with hatched eggs - all from my garden.
4. Goldfinch nest and hatchlings in the peach tree.
SO love having wildlife finding a safe haven in the garden.

04/06/2026

It’s Gladiolus time in the garden when I wait to see which ones from past seasons and newly planted bulbs show up as flower divas in the garden. They became popular in the 19th century with the first hybrids, later were viewed as rather old fashioned but they’re now back in fashion in many gardens.

1 In the first floral flatlay ‘Enchanted’ they’re mixed with wildflowers and garden flowers. Can you spot the bees that landed on the wild leeks - Allium ampeloprasum ? They kept buzzing around the flowers when I was photographing this work with real flowers on a canvas outdoors in natural light.

2 Gladiolus in front of our lemon tree. In warm climates like ours in the Algarve you can leave the bulbs in the ground and many return as perennials.

3 Wild leek, Scabiosa, wild carrot and the blue chicory wildflower in our field.

4 The many different colours of the showy Gladiolus.

Are you a Gladiolus fan?

25/05/2026

Iris Gone Wild … growing near ruins of abandoned homes near me, and next to ancient stone walls, are colonies of Bearded Iris - Iris germanica - all a distinct purple with a golden crest and golden stripes along their bearded falls. With the off shoots of their rhizomes they’ve naturalised in the countryside. I’ve also introduced them in our garden and discovered they prefer spots which are shaded part of the day and prefer their rhizomes just beneath the soil due to our hot dry summers in the Algarve.
1 ‘ Iris Gone Wild’ botanical art photograph
2 Iris germanica colony near a ruin (video)
3 ‘ Iris Gone Wild’ Eco friendly phone case - soon to be released. Next to this biodegradable phone case is a white Iris albicans which also has naturalised all along countryside roadsides
4 Floral photography of Iris germanica naturalised very close to our home
5 Close up of this Bearded Iris in my garden
6 sunset scenes (video)
7 More Iris x germanica gone wild 💜💜

I’ve read that a similar bearded Iris has naturalised across Europe…and last summer when I was in the US for a family wedding I noticed so many different Bearded Iris in gardens and by old homesteads in Vermont and Maine!

I’ll soon be updating in my newsletter when my phone cases are launched x

18/05/2026

I call this floral photography flatlay Candy Land as the colours of the May garden flowers and wildflowers are like a mix of sweets. It’s filled with an assortment of roses, sweet peas, cornflowers, Love-in-the-mist, mallow, wild delphiniums and chicory.
1 Botanical photography artwork with flowers from my garden and field
2 Spanish mallow - Malva hispanica
3 Cornflowers in a wild patch in my garden
4 Roses at sunset
5 Chicory - Cichorium intybus
6 video of tiny meadow in my garden with cornflowers, love in the mist, and a poppy
7 sweet peas

12/05/2026

Who loves when the roses bloom? In between rain showers I’ve been so happy to see the garden fill with roses again…with flower tea and botanical breaks and vintage floral books…
I’m also getting ready to launch phone cases featuring my botanical art photography - there will first be eco friendly cases (the prints on them are amazing) as well as luxury tough MagSafe cases. As I’m also on long drives and many nights away this May as my twins’ A Level exam centre is in a different part of Algarve the launch is still a few weeks away (they’ll be shipped from EU and US hubs). I’m happy to say that I now have carers taking care of my mother who lives in our cottage annex so I can focus on both my twins and work (I’m just going to add that I think carers are incredibly special )
So here you have ..
1 Tea and botanicals with roses, vintage books, and freshly picked flowers from our garden
2 Pierre de Ronsard roses
3 ‘ Where Roses Bloom’ biodegradable phone case
4 White rambling roses Felicite- Perpetue on our gate wall - it’s a historical old rose which I grew from a cutting picked at an abandoned factory. EVergreen foliage and I don’t have to worry about watering it despite our heat
5 Pierre de Ronsard roses
6 ‘ Where Roses Bloom’ botanical artwork photographed with Felicite Perpetue roses, Love in a Mist, Hibiscus,Salva, and other roses all grown in my garden
7 Iris sibirica

🌿🌸🤍🩵💜

04/05/2026

May the Fourth be with you! Gladiolus is derived from the Latin word ‘little sword’ and in the language of flowers mean strength of character.
I always look forward to the abundance of the May garden when it also fills with Roses and a sprinkling everywhere of ‘Love in the Mist.’
1. ‘Spring Alchemy’ - real flowers all grown in my garden photographed in a floral flatlay.
2. Gladiolus next to the lemon tree
3. Basket of garden spring flowers
4. Pierre de Ronsard roses in my garden today which hopefully will cover the whole arch in a few years time x

28/04/2026

Sunset moments in our garden - I’m so happy that the first Bearded Iris are blooming! I planted these Iris germanica bulbs last year - they’re ones that naturalise around our lanes so I was hoping they’d do well💜💜 Often you can see them growing around old ruins which makes me wonder when they were first planted around here.

In (2) are my Felicite-Perpetue roses. This originally was from a cutting I made from a climbing rose shrub at an abandoned factory.

(4) my bottle brush tree ( Callistemon) at sunset - this started out as a dying small plant in a container when we moved into our home.

(5) ‘ Rose’ our feral rescue cat looking out of the window of our cottage next to us where my mother lives. In the last couple of months she’s finally let us pet her! Indeed she now wants to be stroked all the time 😻

(6) The last wild Scilla peruviana in our April garden. Not planted - but like other wildflowers finding a home in our garden x

22/04/2026

“The earth laughs in flowers” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Wildflower meadows to celebrate Earth Day.

THese are all April wildflowers growing in our field and countryside around us here in the Algarve.

1 and 5 are details from my botanical art photograph ‘Wildflower Meadow’ - it’s a blended collage of photographs of wildflowers taken on walks by our home. (A small limited edition now long gone)

I had to include the sawfly orchid because if you look at it closely it looks like it’s laughing!

Celebrate and enjoy the beauty of nature - bring out your wild side x

Endereço

Região Do Algarve
Albufeira
8200-250

Website

http://wildabouthere.com/

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