Garden People
Valerie Finnis & the Golden Age of Gardening
Ursula Buchan
with Anna Pavord
Brent Elliott
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| ‘One of our favourites of the year … fascinating and charming’ | | – BBC Gardeners’ World |
| ‘A classic record of great gardeners … an unmissable book … the defining record of sixty years of English gardening and the people who really knew what they were doing’ | | – The Financial Times |
| ‘Beautifully evocative … epitomizes life, society and gardens in the second half of the 20th century’ | | – Amateur Gardening |
| ‘Wonderful images … a lovely read, part social history, part gardening record’ | | – The Gloss Magazine |
No 1. on The Independent's ‘Ten Best Coffee Table Books'
Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, Lady Birley at Charleston Manor, Roald Dahl at Great Missenden; they, and many other dedicated gardeners, are captured by the discerning eye of Valerie Finnis (1924-2006) in her photographic portraits, collected together for the first time in Garden People.
A much-loved and admired figure in post-war gardening, Valerie Finnis was also a talented photographer. From the mid-1950s onwards she took photographs of gardeners, gardens and plants, using a trusted Rolleiflex camera. She travelled around Britain and beyond, meeting and photographing the great and famous in gardening – Nancy Lancaster, society hostess; Scottish artist Mary McMurtrie; gardening personality Percy Thrower – as well as lesser-known nurserymen, plant enthusiasts, designers and artists.
All are captured here in Garden People – at home in their gardens, weeding, inspecting, watering and standing proudly by their plants, wearing the clothes and fashions of the day, epitomising life and society in the second half the 20th century.
Valerie Finnis’s photographs offer an unparalleled record of the gardening scene of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, and are an evocation of a world now irrevocably changed.
See Ursula Buchan's website
– At the 2008 Milan fashion show, designer Christopher Bailey, Creative Director of Burberry, built his 'Garden Girls' collection inspired by this book!
Also of interest:
Derek Jarman's Garden
Modern Garden Design
The Garden Through the Year
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|  |  | | | | ISBN 0500513538 | | ISBN-13 978-0500513538 | | | | 23.0 x 16.5 cm | | PLC with Jacket | | 160pp | | 229 illustrations, 229 in colour | | First published 2007 | | | | £16.95 | | | |  | | | | 
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