Artist and Illustrator Angie Lewin

Angie Lewin and Christopher Stocks on The Book of Garden Flowers

*Please note, we are very excited to announce that Angie Lewin will be joined now by co-author Christopher Stocks for this event*

Celebrated artist and illustrator Angie Lewin will ring in May's floral explosion with a visit to the bookshop. Following on her beautiful illustrations in The Book of Pebbles and The Book of Wild Flowers, she returns with another collaboration with Christopher Stocks to provide the perfect armchair and gardening companion to the garden flowers of the British Isles.

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 studied fine art at the Central School of Art and has since become a highly regarded artist and printmaker. She has published three books: Angie Lewin: Plants and Places, The Book of Pebbles and The Book of Wild Flowers.

Christopher Stocks is a writer and journalist who has worked for, among others, Harpers & Queen, ES Magazine, Arena and Wallpaper. More recently he wrote a weekly gardening column for the Independent On Sunday, and he is a regular contributor to Gardens Illustrated. He won a 2007 Bridport Prize for his poetry. His first book, Forgotten Fruits, was published in 2008. The Book of Pebbles was published in 2019.