Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden

Become a part of artist and master gardener Frances Palmer’s world as she shares everything she knows about growing and arranging flowers in this gorgeous book—"Flower lovers, prepare for peak inspiration" (Amy Merrick, author of On Flowers).

In this follow-up to Life in the Studio, potter, gardener, and photographer Frances Palmer celebrates her love of flowers. Frances approaches her garden planning in waves, ensuring there are always beautiful booms for her to photograph in her vases. In Life with Flowers, chapters for each these “waves" includes profiles on her favorite varieties--with flower-specific gardening how-to's and arranging techniques, as well as delicious flower-forward recipes and simple DIY projects. 

Part of the delight and richness of this book comes from the fact that Frances is at once a gardener and an artist: We learn that she was inspired to grow bearded irises after an exhibition of Cedric Morris’s iris paintings at the Garden Museum in London; that when arranging her tulips she thinks of André Kertész's 1939 surreal photograph Melancholic Tulip; and that she never passes a tiger lily without imagining the chattering garden from Alice in Wonderland or smells her azalea bush without being transported to the English garden of Rebecca. 

To read Life with Flowers is to be invited into both the garden and the creative mind of an insatiably curious, highly skilled, and wildly generous talent.

Frances Palmer, author of Life in the Studio and the forthcoming Life with Flowers, is a potter known for her handmade functional ceramics, a gardener known especially for her dahlias, and a photographer who finds her greatest inspiration where her flowers meet her pots. Her work has been featured in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue, Elle Décor, Martha Stewart Living, The World of Interiors, House & Garden,British House & Garden, and Veranda, among other publications. She lives, works, and gardens in Weston, Connecticut. Follow her on Instagram at @francespalmer.