Jacaranda season in Brisbane runs from roughly mid October to mid November, peaking in the last week of October and the first week or two of November. It lasts about three weeks in any given street, and the exact timing shifts a little each year depending on how warm and wet the spring has been. Then the blossom drops, the footpaths turn purple for a few days, and it is over until next spring.
That short window is the whole appeal. It is also why people photograph it every single year and still feel like they missed it.
When to see it, and where
If you want to catch it properly, the last fortnight of October is the safest bet. Brisbane's best known jacaranda spots are New Farm Park, the streets around St Lucia and the University of Queensland campus, Bardon and Paddington's older hillside streets, and the approach to the Goodwill Bridge. The suburbs with the oldest street plantings give you the tunnel effect, where the canopies meet overhead and the whole road goes lilac.
Overcast light is better than bright sun for this. Jacaranda purple is a difficult colour, it goes chalky and blue in harsh midday light and it blows out easily. A soft grey sky holds the colour together, which is why a lot of these were made on unremarkable looking afternoons.
Purple Parade
Purple Parade, Brisbane, QLD Australia
Shot from the air, looking straight down a street in full bloom. From ground level a jacaranda is a tree. From a couple of hundred feet up it becomes a pattern, and you start seeing the city's street grid drawn in purple.
This one is landscape and it wants a wide wall. Above a couch it reads as an abstract until someone walks close enough to work out what they are looking at, which is the best thing a print can do in a living room.
Bloom Boulevard
Bloom Boulevard, Brisbane, QLD Australia
The same idea turned upright. A run of trees down one side of a road, purple against the green of everything that is not a jacaranda. The contrast between the two greens and the lilac is what makes this one work, and it is entirely accidental, that is just what Brisbane looks like in late October.
Portrait orientation, so it suits the narrow wall that most rooms have and most people ignore. A hallway, the space beside a doorway, a stairwell.
Jacaranda Veil
Jacaranda Veil, Brisbane, QLD Australia
Close in on the blossom itself, dense clusters on bare branches against a pale hazy sky. Jacarandas flower before they leaf up properly, which is why the colour is so solid. There is no green competing with it.
This is the gentlest of the four. In a white frame it almost disappears into a light room, and that is the point, it adds colour without adding weight. Bedrooms, nurseries, anywhere you want soft rather than striking.
Lavender Dream
Lavender Dream, Brisbane, QLD Australia
A double exposure, the blossom smeared into vertical streaks of light. This is the one that stops being a photograph of a tree and becomes a colour study, and it is the one I would hang myself.
It works where a literal image would feel too busy. Above a bedhead, in an ensuite, on the wall of a room that already has plenty going on. People who do not like floral art tend to like this one, because it does not read as floral until you are told.
Living with purple
Purple is the one colour people hesitate over, so a few honest notes.
It is quieter than you expect. Jacaranda lilac sits close to grey, so it behaves more like a neutral than a statement colour. It goes with white walls, warm timber and every shade of linen.
Frame choice changes it completely. Oak warms the purple and pushes it towards pink. White cools it and makes it recede. Black makes it graphic and a bit more serious. If you are unsure, oak is the forgiving option.
The aerials go large, the close-ups do not have to. A street pattern needs size to read. A blossom study works at a modest size on a small wall.
Height. Centre of the image around 145cm from the floor, or about 20cm above the back of a sofa. There is more on that in the hanging guide, and a video walkthrough on the hanging your wall art page.
The full collection
There are sixteen jacaranda prints in the collection, from aerials of whole streets to single blossom studies and a few abstracts. They sit inside the wider Bloom Collection, which is where all the flowering work lives.
Every print is made to order here in Australia, ready to hang, and shipped tracked Australia wide.
If Brisbane is your city, you might also like the full Brisbane collection or the Brisbane aerials. Not sure what size suits your space? Send me a message and I will help you work it out.
