SUMMER is here and one of our green and pleasant land's most creatively inspiring floral landscapes is in full bloom.

Awash with colour, Brantwood has unique and beautiful mountainside gardens set in a 250-acre wood estate with spectacular views over Coniston Water and the fells beyond.

Apparently, ‘Brant’ is Norse for steep, and Brantwood’s steep woods were first worked by Norse invaders in the ninth century. With an amazing diversity of flora and fauna, the ancient semi-natural woodlands comprise half the estate.

Inside the former home of John Ruskin, it's just as vibrant and vivid as Cumbrian artist Tracy Levine brings together a new collection of work in Brantwood's Severn Studio.

Produced over the past three years, Tracy's stunning Bright and Beautiful exhibition, draws attention to the parts of nature that often go unnoticed: the places where nature emerges from managed land and where it blossoms, highlighting the importance of the nurture and conservation of our many endangered meadow flowers and native wildflowers.

Besides being inspired by the beauty in weeds, meadows, hedgerows and wildflowers, Tracy has produced a special series of large hydrangea paintings that were created over three autumns. All painted when the colours have transformed, when the blooms start to die back and they turn the most beautiful reds, blues and purples.

Tracy says that the flowers were taken from her father's garden and besides being sentimental, they are a poignant reminder of her father.

"They remind us of the impermanence of everything and are symbolic of the ageing process," explains the award-winning artist and elected member of the Lake Artists Society.

"This body of work has been my most enjoyable to paint, both the subject matter and the palette of colour being so inspirational."

The exhibition runs until September 3 in Brantwood's Severn Studio daily from 10.30am-5pm.

Tracy will also be holding a Meet The Artist talk in the Studio at 11am on both July 24 and August 10.

Meanwhile, Tracy is also opening up her Arnside studio overlooking the Kent Estuary for this weekend's (June 24/25) highly rated Silverdale and Arnside Art and Craft Trail 2017.

Elsewhere in Brantwood's Blue Gallery is On Home Ground: Ruskin in England and Scotland, also on show until September.

Ruskin’s depictions of French cathedrals, Venetian palaces and the Swiss Alps are rightly admired, but he also produced many fine drawings and watercolours on home ground in England and Scotland. Ruskin was taught to paint by two of the notable topographical artists of his day, A.V. Copley Fielding and Samuel Prout. From his very earliest years Ruskin was obsessed by and travelled in search of landscape. At first this was with his parents and included a number of visits to the Lake District, where he became steeped in fashionably Romantic and Picturesque readings of nature. He was deeply influenced at this time by Wordsworth, by whom he was presented the Newdigate Prize for Poetry at Oxford. His journeys also followed in the footsteps of his artist-hero, JMW Turner and he criss-crossed the country in search of Turner’s source material. Ruskin’s study of the English landscape tradition blossomed into the five volume critical masterpiece, Modern Painters. This display will include examples from early tours to the Lake District in 1837 and 1838 and to Scotland, the land of his parents’ birth. Ruskin continued to draw and paint ‘on home ground’ throughout his adult life. The exhibition features studies from all of these periods, including works made as a student at Oxford to those undertaken in and around Brantwood after he settled here in 1872.

On Home Ground is on display in the Blue Gallery daily from 10am-5pm. Admission is included in the house ticket.

For further information telephone 015394-41396 or visit www.brantwood.org.uk.