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Garden People: The Photographs of Valerie Finnis
A charming photographic record of the English gardening scene by one of the best-known figures in postwar British horticulture.
Nancy Lancaster, society hostess and interior designer, sports an elegant straw sombrero and snips delicately at her roses, while Mr. Shepherd, her gardener, wields his shears and neatly clips the topiary at her house, Haseley Court. They and many other dedicated gardeners are captured here by the discerning eye of Valerie Finnis—with just the gentlest touch of humor—in her photographic portraits.
A well-known and well-loved figure in postwar British gardening, Finnis was also a talented photographer. With great skill and verve, she took photographs of gardeners, gardens, and plants from the mid-1950s on, using a Rolleiflex camera that had been given to her by a friend.
Together with her husband, Lord David Scott, Finnis traveled through Great Britain, meeting the famous—Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, Lady Birley at Charleston Manor, Roald Dahl and his family at Great Missenden—as well as less-known gardeners, nurserymen, plant enthusiasts, designers, and artists. All are seen at home in their gardens, weeding, inspecting, watering, and standing proudly by their plants, wearing the fashions of the day, epitomizing life and society in the second half of the twentieth century. 200 illustrations, 100 in color.
Nancy Lancaster, society hostess and interior designer, sports an elegant straw sombrero and snips delicately at her roses, while Mr. Shepherd, her gardener, wields his shears and neatly clips the topiary at her house, Haseley Court. They and many other dedicated gardeners are captured here by the discerning eye of Valerie Finnis—with just the gentlest touch of humor—in her photographic portraits.
A well-known and well-loved figure in postwar British gardening, Finnis was also a talented photographer. With great skill and verve, she took photographs of gardeners, gardens, and plants from the mid-1950s on, using a Rolleiflex camera that had been given to her by a friend.
Together with her husband, Lord David Scott, Finnis traveled through Great Britain, meeting the famous—Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, Lady Birley at Charleston Manor, Roald Dahl and his family at Great Missenden—as well as less-known gardeners, nurserymen, plant enthusiasts, designers, and artists. All are seen at home in their gardens, weeding, inspecting, watering, and standing proudly by their plants, wearing the fashions of the day, epitomizing life and society in the second half of the twentieth century. 200 illustrations, 100 in color.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 8, 2018
If you want to know who was who in the horticultural world of Great Britain in the 1950's and 1960's, this is the book. It's a biography of Valerie Finnis (who I was not familiar with) interspersed with names and information about the many gardening people who were in her circle. I looked through the book twice, once to read the text and then back again to look at the pictures of plants and people. In the back is a list of people included in the book with short biographies for them. It is not an all-inclusive list of everyone who was anyone in gardening in Great Britain during the mid 20th century. It appears to be a list of those Valerie photographed and were included in the book. (Two notables not included are Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto. I guess Valerie never took their pictures.) One interesting tidbit about Valerie's photographs... they are one shot and done, due to the cost of film. So different from today when we take dozens of photos sometimes to get just the right one. I also found it interesting to see how many of Valerie's friends with honored (immortalized?) by having a plant named after them.
February 5, 2018
Ursula Buchan writing about Valerie Finnis? A match made in heaven.
April 28, 2019
Only for those interested in gardening in the countryside of Great Britain. The book also talks about Lady Warwick, but seems a little pretentious. Cute pictures of dainty flowers though.
January 15, 2015
The photos are so marvelous that New Yorker artist Maira Kalman was inspired to do her own version of one of them as a colorful print.
Aside from that, although it's against the rules of polite book society to ever ever cut a book apart for its pictures, I couldn't resist, and bought two copies. One is for my library and the other, you guessed it, I cut apart and framed all the best pictures to hang up in a big display in my kitchen. (Yes, I researched beforehand to see if the photos were available for sale separately somewhere -but no go.)
Unlike all most other gardening books,which just feature plants, this one is about people in their gardens. The photos nearly all appear to be taken in the 1960s and maybe 1970s at latest. They are all English gardeners, mainly private people pottering in their own gardens. Some of them are lords and ladies, many are elderly, almost all of them are dressed up either because they are the sorts of people who wear nice outfits no matter what or because they dressed for the camera. The gardens are lovely of course, but what's best are their owners' expressions of happiness and engrossment as they weed, inspect, prune, push wheel barrows, and water. You can tell, nice suits aside, they are all avid gardeners who would not hesitate to fall to their knees to grub about in the dirt at a moment's notice. In fact one gentleman's wool trousered bottom is photographed in the air as he does just that!
Aside from that, although it's against the rules of polite book society to ever ever cut a book apart for its pictures, I couldn't resist, and bought two copies. One is for my library and the other, you guessed it, I cut apart and framed all the best pictures to hang up in a big display in my kitchen. (Yes, I researched beforehand to see if the photos were available for sale separately somewhere -but no go.)
Unlike all most other gardening books,which just feature plants, this one is about people in their gardens. The photos nearly all appear to be taken in the 1960s and maybe 1970s at latest. They are all English gardeners, mainly private people pottering in their own gardens. Some of them are lords and ladies, many are elderly, almost all of them are dressed up either because they are the sorts of people who wear nice outfits no matter what or because they dressed for the camera. The gardens are lovely of course, but what's best are their owners' expressions of happiness and engrossment as they weed, inspect, prune, push wheel barrows, and water. You can tell, nice suits aside, they are all avid gardeners who would not hesitate to fall to their knees to grub about in the dirt at a moment's notice. In fact one gentleman's wool trousered bottom is photographed in the air as he does just that!
June 21, 2013
The beautiful images in this book are accompanied by brief profiles of gentleman/lady gardeners. Sentences like;
"A cultured, one-time diplomat and spy, his garden was created very much on ecological lines."
"Before her marriage she was Rhoda Pike, an Irish beauty, whom Birley painted many times."
"Maybud, despite her delicate-sounding name, had a mercurial personality and was referred to by Valerie as 'a thorn in everyone's side.'"
"He was also, plainly, a charming man with an excellent sense of humour, kind, modest and scholarly."
Professional plant hunters, world-famous biologists, historical femme fatales, they all receive this succinct and stereotypically British assessment. Charming!
"A cultured, one-time diplomat and spy, his garden was created very much on ecological lines."
"Before her marriage she was Rhoda Pike, an Irish beauty, whom Birley painted many times."
"Maybud, despite her delicate-sounding name, had a mercurial personality and was referred to by Valerie as 'a thorn in everyone's side.'"
"He was also, plainly, a charming man with an excellent sense of humour, kind, modest and scholarly."
Professional plant hunters, world-famous biologists, historical femme fatales, they all receive this succinct and stereotypically British assessment. Charming!
November 6, 2016
This was my bedside book for months, and I finally finished up all the bits I hadn't read. The book came to my attention as the source of the subject of at least one beautiful gouache by the incomparable Maira Kalman. Photos of flowers and dedicated plants-people really quite a joy. A remark about Valerie Finnis who took many photos of her fellow gardeners over the years was that she only took one picture per subject (this was back in the film days) because film was too precious to waste. I think about the profligate way I take pictures these days and I sometimes think maybe we were better off! Anyway many of her pictures are iconic and I am sure I'll return to the book over & over to look at them.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews