Lazy Beds and Machair
The focus for 2015 has been the shape and form of the lazy beds in Lewis and the dazzle of the machair when it blooms. Lazy beds are marks of cultivation in the land from centuries past. No one really knows quite how long ago the people who lived here used these. And it is probably the case that those lines found higher on hills, as in Harris, are likely to also have been lines for drainage. One way or another the lines are still, even now, very evident in the landscape, very green in the summer and sometimes lined with machair (wild flower). They are wonderfully sculptural.
The machair is profuse in fields behind sandy shores, where the sand thrown up on the peaty fields makes an ideal medium for the extraordinary mix of wild flowers.