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Christopher Stocks tells the fascinating tales of nineteen cultivated flowers and their journeys from distant corners of the world to British gardens, illustrated by the painter and printmaker Angie Lewin in this charming companion guide.
The Book of Garden Flowers builds on the success of Angie Lewin’s and Christopher Stocks’ previous collaborations; The Book of Wild Flowers (Thames & Hudson, 2024) and The Book of Pebbles (Thames & Hudson, 2020.) While The Book of Wild Flowers explored the natural history of Britain’s favourite wild species, The Book of Garden Flowers is more a social history, bringing into focus some of the remarkable people who introduced exotic plants to our gardens from around the globe, including:
• Margery Fish, secretary to six successive editors at the Daily Mail, who rescued many cottage garden flowers from obscurity
• Ellen Willmot, who employed over 100 staff in her garden and burned through a huge fortune thanks to her passion for plants, dying penniless and alone
• Charles Dickens, who became obsessed with a particular pelargonium
• John Gerrard, the famous 17th-century herbalist, who planted the first nasturtiums in the UK at his City of London garden
• Henry VIII, who ate the first British-grown artichokes on the outskirts of Chelmsford
Revealing new stories behind some of our most familiar and unusual garden plants, this beautiful book explores the horticultural history and floral folklore of some of the nation’s favourite flowers.
Angie Lewin brings her own vision of the natural world to her work. She sees the beauty in all seasons and all manifestations of plants: the ordered pattern of the blooms, the thrusting energy of the emerging buds, the prolific seedheads and the varieties of shapes, colours and habits to be found in meadow and border.
Angie Lewin was born in Cheshire and studied Fine Art Printmaking at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design before completing a postgraduate degree in printmaking at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. After working in London as an illustrator she studied Horticulture and then subsequently moved to Norfolk, which prompted a return to printmaking. Angie now lives and works in Speyside, Scotland.
In recent years, her practice has centred around watercolour and she was awarded RWS in 2016. Inspired by both the clifftops and saltmarshes of the North Norfolk coast and the Scottish Highlands, she depicts these contrasting environments and their native flora in wood engraving, linocut, silkscreen, lithograph and collage. Her still life practice often incorporate seedpods, grasses, flints and dried seaweed collected on walking and sketching trips.
In 2010 Merrell published a monograph, Angie Lewin – Plants and Places. As well as designing fabrics and stationery for St Jude’s, which Angie runs with her husband Simon, she has completed commissions for Penguin, Faber, Conran Octopus, Merrell and Picador and has also designed fabrics for Liberty. In 2006 Angie was elected to The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and in 2008 to The Society of Wood Engravers. In 2010 she was elected to The Art Workers Guild and in 2016 she was elected to The Royal Watercolour Society.
Public Collections include:
V&A London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; The London Institute; The University of Aberystwyth; Art for Hospitals and Hospices Collection
To view prints by Angie Lewin please click here
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