Frances Palmer

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.

To step into potter Frances Palmer's world is to be surrounded by the trappings of a life that has been intentionally--and painstakingly--built to maximize creativity. A light-filled, airy studio in which to make her pottery, with a corner always at the ready for her daily photo shoots. Cutting gardens overflowing with flowers to be snipped as inspiration strikes. Shelves of cookbooks to peruse as she plans the menu of her next dinner party, and museum catalogs and art books to pore over when it's time to imagine a new vessel. After 30 years as an artist and entrepreneur, Palmer has learned how to cultivate a life that brings out her best. Those years have been at once rewarding and challenging, fruitful and fraught, and through it all, she has discovered the things that matter most: determination, routine, prioritization, perseverance, and perspective. She has distilled these hard-won lessons, and more, into her debut book, a manual for current and aspiring creatives. The book is loosely arranged chronologically, beginning with Palmer's background in art history and the foundations of her pottery practice through to the day-to-day of running her successful business and tending to her ever-evolving gardens, and culminating in the continuous exploration and collaboration she is engaged in today. Along the way, readers are brought behind the scenes with hundreds of gorgeous photographs (of her ceramics, her beautiful flower arrangements, her gardens, and more), and even step-by-step instructions for her most cherished techniques and recipes. It all adds up to a one-of-a-kind portrait and handbook for a creative life, well-lived.