Friday, September 23 saw the official launch of Seaside Flowers of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve by S Morgan and Dr Barry Yates.
The book, illustrated with hundreds of Barry’s beautiful flower photographs, is an exploration of the fascinating lives of the reserve’s plants.
“We didn’t want to produce a guide book,” Barry explained. “There are already plenty of excellent botanical guides available. Instead we wanted to highlight the plants that live here on the reserve.”
“What we hoped to do was introduce readers to the quite extraordinary lives of some of these incredible plants,” Morgan continued. “Some of them are so rare they only exist here and in one other place in Britain, some depend on fungus in order to survive, others provide a home for some of the rarest invertebrates in the country… from the tiny to the enormous, they’re all specialists and they’re all great at surviving in our unique conditions.”
The book is the third produced by the Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve as part of the Friends’ on-going effort to help open up the reserve to a wider range of visitors. “The Friends want to encourage everyone to enjoy the reserve,” Morgan explained. “With this in mind they have produced books which have looked at the human and natural history of the reserve, have show-cased art and poetry inspired by the reserve and with this book have looked at the unique plants that can be seen here every spring and summer.”
The book could not have come about without the wonderful range of photographs taken by Barry over the years. These are not simple record shots’ instead they are a collection of floral landscapes and close-ups that allow the reader really to see the flowers in great detail.
The flowers have also been the inspiration for the Rye Harbour Writers’ Group for the last few months. Their collected works are now dotted about the reserve on boards to make up a flower poetry trail. Maps of the trail are available in the Discovery Centre.
We were lucky enough that some of the poets were there to read their poems.
The book is available in the Discovery Centre, at Avocet Gallery in Rye Harbour and in other local bookshops. It costs £15 and profits go directly to help the nature reserve.
Before the launch Dr Barry Yates gave a talk as part of the Rye Arts Festival
Anyone who has been to one of Dr Barry Yates’s talks will know that he does not disappoint. His audiences come away having learnt so much. On Friday before the launch of the new book Seaside Flowers of the Nature Reserve, co-written by S Morgan and Barry Yates, Barry gave a talk illustrated by his wonderful photos of the flowers that one could so easily overlook or miss.
The key message we all came away with was: Slow down, sit on a seat, watch and discover.
And if you take the book with you as reference you are in for an amazing treat.
Image Credits: kt bruce .