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in the garden – goth garden plants

10.06.2023 by btslingerie // Leave a Comment

a round white marble table with white ironstone pitcher and washbowl filled with limelight hydrangeas and goth dark purple amaranth. On the table a dark black beauty dahlia, purple amaranth, and coral love lies bleeding amaranth draping over the edge of the table

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Where does one go when looking for darkest plants for their goth garden… well I asked that question and had trouble finding the answer. If you identify as goth, dark, witchy, punk you might appreciate this post since these are not your granny’s cottage garden plants. Even if you don’t identify with those things and are just looking to add contrast in food or plantings and floral arrangements this list might help you find what you are looking for.

As someone who has consciously searched out dark plants from edibles to florals and foliage- there is very little true black in the plant world. The best you can expect is typically going to be a very deep saturated purple so searching the term “black garden plants” will not necessarily yield the correct results. This list is not complete since it really only includes things I am able to grow in zone 5/6 NY and not the many plants that thrive in warmer climates.

Edibles

Plums, pears, black raspberries, blackberries, dark opal basil and tatsoi, dark purple bush and pole beans, and tomatoes tinged with black these are a few of my favorite unconventional things to grow in my veggie garden and orchard.

Varieties to look for

Elephant heart plum
Red Seckel pear
Black raspberry
Red noodle bean
Dark opal purple basil
Thai purple basil
Persian basil (some are black speckled and some come out darker than others)
Alice’s dream tomato
Queen of the night tomato
Royal burgundy bush beans
Sugar magnolia snap pea
Blackberries & mulberries
Purple bok choi, red scarlet tatsoi

a hand holding two halves of a plum, one with red flesh facing up and one with yellow/red skin facing down

fingers lifting a dark purple pear on a leafy branch into view

Tomatoes I wanted to like:

Wooly Kate & Queen of the night (both had such bad pollination)
Brad’s atomic Grape, Bosque Blue, and Black strawberry (bc they got spots so easily and spoiled quickly)
Black cherry (they split so easily and aren’t that dark/black)

Tomatoes I want to try – indigo sun, black beauty, indigo kumquat, indigo blue chocolate

Flowers

Tulips

Black hero (double)
black parrot (ruffled/serrated)
Queen of the night (single)

a garden bed with black and white tulips in foreground and blurry view of garden in background

Dahlias

Hollyhill Black beauty (solid)
creme de cassis (the back is a deep inky purple)
hollyhill bewitched (streaks of dark purple)

Honorable mention: I’ve been trying to grow these and either had tuber fails, wrong color, or been unable to order: Hulin’s carnival, lights out

Hollyhill Bewitched, a dark red purple flower that is almost black with spots of dew on petals

a hand with silver bracelet holding Creme de Cassis, a pale purple flower with dark purple backs of petal.

Perennials

Lilies (nightrider shown below, landini, blackstone, mapira)
Bearded Irises (so many to choose from schreiners iris has several)
Columbine (black Barlow, pleated blackberry)

an inky purple almost black bearded iris with drops of dew on the petals

an inky dark purple bearded iris in garden bed with pale pink bearded iris in background

Annuals

Sunflowers (Queen of the night, black beauty)
sweet peas (almost black or beaujolais)
scabiosa (dark night)

Honorable mention: black magic or chocolate cosmos and nigra/black hollyhock

a opaline hobnail vase with clear/opaque milky white glass filled with dark purple sweet peas on a granite mantle with brass candles and black wall in the background

a hand holding two bunches of flowers wrapped in brown paper, one is black night scabiosa and other is scabiosa seedheads

Foliage

Hibiscus dark foliage (summerific evening rose & choco latte)
Redbud (forest pansy), amaranth (opi red)
Huechera (black pearl, obsidian, cracked ice)

a dark foliage hibiscus with bright fuchsia blooms and colorful garden flowers and concrete bird bath in background

If you’re goth gardening in a different zone or have some other black/almost black plants you love, feel free to leave them in the comments so others can add a little darkness to their gardens!

Follow our journey in growing and share in our experience and lessons learned from nature with more posts from In the Garden

inspire – Iceland travel tips

11.12.2015 by btslingerie // 1 Comment

inspire – Iceland Travel Tips

Iceland has become the place to see, and its not hard to understand why. The incredible natural landscapes are so inspiring, and since our trip we’ve gotten so many questions about our tips for travel as many others are making the voyage themselves, so we’ve collected travel photos and a breakdown of our tips. I spent hours reading travel blogs & looking up information since we traveled to Iceland for our Andromeda photoshoot – I needed to scout locations and we couldn’t spare even a moment to run around looking for things while there! Hopefully all that time and research will save you a bit of time and headache on your travels. To get straight to the tips scroll down, but if you want pictures & lists of sites we visited read on!

For behind the scenes of our photoshoot with Arden click here & if you’re interested in the Andromeda lookbook click here

Behind the scenes #BTSfireandice

Day 1 – Arrival & Blue Lagoon

early am arrival, pick up rental car, blue lagoon, check into airbnb in reykjavik, shop/cook, prep for shoot next day

Iceland Fire & Ice - Between the Sheets on the road — Landing at Keflavik, which is about an hour from Reykjavik by car. (Free luggage carts were appreciated as we discovered our luggage had its wheels broken on the flight.)

steam rising from blue lagoon - between the sheets iceland travel tips — Seriously, what is there to say about the Blue Lagoon that hasn’t already been gushed about on every travel blog? I was told it was overrated/overpriced, and honestly I disagree, it was serene, surreal, beautiful, and there is no wonder that a whopping 90 something percent of all visitors to Iceland stop here!

Lava at Blue Lagoon - between the sheets iceland travel tips — Lava Restaurant at the Blue Lagoon

Day 2 – Southern Iceland

road trip to Reynifsjara, stops at skogafoss. If we weren’t shooting we would’ve had more time to see more of vik, take a detour to search for the abandoned airplane, see a couple more waterfalls, or have driven a bit further east to glaciers at jokarlson

Day 3 – Reykjavik explorations

we rested up and took a break from shooting and explored Reykjavik sites, if we had another day or on a return visit we might’ve spent this day driving north or to the westfjords

josh layla and arden in downtown reykjavik — Selfie with Hallgrimskirkja

cute colored houses in downtown reykjavik iceland — colored houses in downtown Reykjavik

touristing at viking museum gift shop in reykjavik iceland — viking museum gift shop, near Aurora and down the street from the street art above

northern lights center in reykjavik iceland — aurora northern lights center

visitor map at northern lights center in reykjavik — visitors map at aurora reykjavik

Day 4 – Golden Circle

Highlights Pingvellir, Gulfoss, Geysir, and had we not been shooting we would’ve visited this greenhouse for a tour and lunch!

pingvellir on iceland golden circle roadtrip — Roadside cafe near the entrance to Pingvellir

Iceland Geysir Golden Circle — a few snaps of Geysir going off with crowd for scale

iceland geysir cafe on golden circle — the gift shop and cafe next to Geysir was really nice, the coffee and cheesecakes – lots of tour buses so this place was pretty packed

gulfoss waterfall on golden circle roadtrip in iceland — Gulfoss waterfalls was one of the most incredible sites we visited, with several viewing spots and a relatively short but wet walk up to be right on top of the waterfall. Only wish the cloud cover had not been so low that day!

layla l'obatti and josh verleun of between the sheets at gulfoss waterfall in iceland — Layla & Josh at Gulfoss waterfall

icelandic pony on golden circle road trip — We made friends with this icelandic pony, stay tuned for more photos & our behind the scenes teasers of the collection and photoshoot with Arden!

Day 5 – We had early flight to the UK, let me know in comments if you are interested in tips for London! We didn’t shoot there but it was nice to have the opportunity to continue onto London bc of Iceland Air’s free layover the portion of the trip to London only added a small price to each ticket.

I can’t wrap this up without recommending you pop on over to I heart Reykjavik, I’ve mentioned the blog on our periscope chats before and after the trip and it was a huge resource in planning our journey to Iceland!

Roundup of Tips for Planning Your Trip

Things to get in airport

before entering

Duty free food (mostly candy) or liquor that you can finish while in country – (we didn’t really see any liquor or wine shops in our travels around Reykjavik and if you’re like me you prefer to do something when its most convenient, so a little forethought saved us a trip out of our way for a bottle or two of wine which would’ve cut down on our sightseeing and relaxing time!)

Sim Card, they have limited brands at airport but this helped when we needed to find/reach our car rental that was located on other side of parking lot since there really weren’t a lot of staff or an info desk at airport when we arrived off the red eye. More details on brands we tried further in the post!

when leaving

If you’re traveling on via iceland air’s stopover remember whatever liquor you get will have to be checked on leg of your journey back (and with overweight bag fees be careful not to go over!). We got some Icelandic gin that is really good and definitely worth rearranging our luggage for.

Chocolate and Icelandic salts – we regretted not getting the salts! You will find these all over in gift shops all over reykjavik as well, but if you forget grab them on your way out!

Sim card- options

They didn’t have siminn when we went, this we found at the gas station but had to ask attentandent to help us with activating as the call in was in icelandic! Siminn worked well in/outside reykjavik but we didn’t go farther that vik/reynifsjara.

We picked up a Vodafone sim upon arrival at duty free and it worked well in Reykjavik, but didn’t have as much data as Siminn.

Culture

People are really friendly, things close rather early between 6pm-9pm. We stayed across from a grocery store that was open later, that helped on our first day running out to get groceries

No need to tip – this was surprising to me because we come from tipping culture but was good to know ahead of time.

Blue Lagoon & pool etiquette

This would never occur to me but before heading over I read this post, and there were definitely some stern pool attendants who enforced rules. Basically, shower before, get completely dry before re-entering locker room.

We got the premium package at the Blue Lagoon, which includes robe and slippers and a little gift pack of their toiletries, and a drink at the lagoon side bar. If it was summer and not as chilly you could probably make due without the robe, but you’d probably want to pack flip flops for showers.

We didn’t manage a visit to one of Reykjavik’s many geothermal pools – I guess we have a reason to go back now! Public pools are frequented year round in Reykjavik, because of the heated water it is possible even in the chill of winter to enjoy swimming (check this post for a roundup of reykjavik pools). If you have more time or decide to skip the Blue Lagoon, you might want to check some out!

Hotels vs Airbnb

This is a personal preference, to me the bonus of staying at an apartment with a kitchen is getting to shop and experience the daily life of local. Plus late night snacks and coffee on demand are pretty sweet too.

Rental cars

Reserve ahead to make sure that you get a non-stick shift if you don’t know how to use stick. My guess is that in the summer/high season this is more of an issue, but all the rental cars save a few are right off the exit from customs so you can easily book one there if you don’t have time or inclination to book ahead.

In general there was not a lot of traffic, there was a funny quirk when driving and getting directions they dont have 4 way stops that have traffic circles, my guess is because most people drive stick but if anyone knows why planners choose traffic circles vs 4 way stop let us know in the comments!

We found out gas was more expensive than stateside, a liter is much smaller than a gallon so if you’re operating on a tight budget add a line in, look up current rates, and maybe look for a fuel efficient rental car.

Language

We got around with english, if you are road tripping further afield I think basic Icelandic would help.

Food

We only snacked and had coffee while out, with the exception of blue lagoon’s Lava Restaurant which was our only full meal (and fantastic! dining in a spa robe, yes please!). A rundown on the places we ate below.

Joe & juice, Te Og Kaffi (Wish this was stateside!), Bistro at geysir (prettiest cake selection & great coffee), C is for cookie coffeeshop in Reykjavik, lava restaurant at blue lagoon.

I guess this is a good spot to mention getting the exchange rate in your head, Iceland Krona to USD is a bit confusing and while we found most things were not too expensive (again we may be bias here coming from a notoriously expensive city like NYC) but when incorrectly translated to USD this could lead to some overspending. Another money tip is to find a card that does not charge foreign transaction fees – your credit card company negotiates exchange rate and waves the foreign transaction fees. If you’re not careful this could add $$ to your trip that could be getting spent on great experiences.

love – artist, muse, & chameleon Meredith Adelaide

09.04.2015 by btslingerie // Leave a Comment

I follow a lot of photographers in the Pacific Northwest on Instagram, and I can’t quite remember when I came across Meredith but we chatted about her transition to the East Coast when I saw a call she put out to collaboration with designers an artists on Instagram. She told me she was planning a trip to Europe and wanted pieces to shoot, and you can see the stunning result below. Funnily enough she stopped by Iceland and we’re already planning a trip there later this year.

Sometimes seeing photos of artfully crafted models becomes a bit draining, we’re seeing a person with someone else’s idea of what they should look like on them. We do this as brand when we transform models on set, even natural makeup and photographer’s lens is enough to capture a likeness that is something else. But what I find interesting and lovely about Meredith’s instagram is that is is mostly comprised of self portraits.

I don’t know if Meredith would call herself a muse, but take a quick look at her instagram and you’ll see the many artists who’ve been inspired by her and their artwork reflecting her representation. Then again, she is also an artist in the way she explores her own self image through photography. There is something raw and real about her self portraits, and I think its that there is no one else between her and the camera and so we get what her image of herself is, and that is rare in the modeling world. No makeup artist, no designer or stylist, no hair person, just Meredith. Let’s not try to put these images in a box and call it art, or modeling, let’s just appreciate the beautiful intimate images of Meredith, by Meredith.