'We find the social element of gardening fascinating' – By telling captivating stories of plants through people, The Book of Garden Flowers will inspire you to reach new horticultural heights

Gardening books often fall into one of two categories - instructive ‘how to’ manuals or glossy, inspirational coffee table books that look wonderful but showcase gardens most of us can only dream of. Fortunately, there is also a third category that can light the fires of inspiration and kindle an urge to grow in even the least green-fingered reader; intoxicating books that speak seductively of a love of plants, and the people who have found, bred and grown them.

The Book of Garden Flowers is a compact, fascinating volume written by Christopher Stocks and enchantingly illustrated by Angie Lewin. It is, in short, the perfect book to turn to if you're mulling over what to plant in your front yard or looking for ideas for an eye-catching maximalist border.

Via the captivating stories of plant obsessives, this book showcases the charms of 19 different varieties, ranging from agapanthus and astrantia to hellebores, calendula, tulips, auriculas, and eryngiums - in other words, plants that many of us can, and do, grow in our yards.

The early plant explorers

Instead of being simply about the plants, this gorgeously illustrated book brings a fascinating social element into play by talking about the people who first discovered and bred the different cultivars, revelling in their dedication - obsession, even - to travelling the world, finding and creating perfect specimens that would thrive not just in their native lands, but across continents too.

Did you know, for instance, that Charles Dickens, was obsessed by the bold red pelargonium cultivar ‘Tom Thumb’, a container garden hero. So great was his love for this plant that his daughter Kate remarked when he died, he would be wreathed with ‘a crown of scarlet geraniums’.

The biographies are fascinating and include Nora Barlow, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin who became a botanical geneticist following her studies at Cambridge University in England. Her speciality was the ever-popular biennial aquilegias, or columbines, and she has been immortalized through the multi-petalled pink cultivar that bears her name.

Another person of note is Lewis Palmer, who fought in the First World War, moved to Hampshire and became a prominent figure in gardening, vice president of the Royal Horticultural Society.

He was fascinated by agapanthus; he had seen them in South Africa and wanted to try growing his own, which he did, in his garden in the south of England - many of the agapanthus plants we buy today are descendants of the cultivars he bred.

Plants with heritage

Speaking to Homes & Gardens, Chris, who is also the author of Forgotten Fruits, The Book of Pebbles and The Book of Wild Flowers, all available on Amazon, said: 'I think that people find the social element of gardening fascinating, reading about the people who have literally put in the spade work.

'It makes it more personal, more real somehow and I think it brings back that personal touch that may have been lost. It's all about finding a new angle and making the history of a particular plant a real story, something that people may not have read about before.'

The popularity of plants waxes and wanes and like all things, they come in and out of fashion, are an exclusive commodity lusted after by many but afforded by only a few, before becoming mass-market and losing their exclusive allure.

The varieties showcased in the book were selected by Chris and Angie for their visual beauty and because they are plants they both like.

Several grow in Chris’s garden on the Isle of Portland on the mild but windswept English Channel coast of south Dorset, and also in Angie’s garden in Scotland, two geographic extremes of the UK but both places where plants need to be made of stern stuff to cope with challenging weather.

Chris’s cottage is around 300 years old and the garden has aged accordingly, with centuries of rich clay soil that plants can dig their roots into and grow like rockets. But not everything is paradisiacal in this slice of English Eden, as anything growing on Portland needs to be able to cope with the salt-laden rain and wind driven across the land by prevailing south-westerly winds.

'We have to have herbaceous plants that die back in the fall or they would be killed by winter storms,' said Chris. 'I remember one year being so thrilled when the snowdrops came out, but you could literally watch them wilting as a storm blew in and the salt hit them.'

He described his plot, a small courtyard garden, as a ‘jungle’ where the right varieties thrive, supporting each other and creating such a mass of plants of all heights, including plenty of ground cover varieties, that weeds literally don't get a look-in.

When Chris and his partner first moved to Dorset from London they settled in the north of the county and had to try growing plants for shade in a garden that received little daily sun, but that all changed when they moved to the coast.

Chris said: 'We relocated to Portland, bringing all our plants with us, so many pots, and everything just doubled in size, it was incredible!

'Where our house is, we look down over the sea and the horizon, and the light levels are incredibly bright, almost Mediterranean, like Greece, which the plants love. The drawback is that everything grows so vigorously and is so packed in there’s no room for bedding plants or fast-growing annuals, though we do grow plenty of things in containers.'

Much of the charm of The Book of Garden Flowers comes from Angie Lewin’s illustrations.

She previously collaborated with Chris on his books of pebbles and wild flowers and her floral artwork ranges from starkly architectural varieties, where she casts a keen eye and a sharp pen over the otherworldly seedheads of teasels, eryngium and alliums, to the voluptuous gentle brushstrokes she uses on cyclamen and auriculas.

At a time when society is increasingly polarized and we are all too consumed by technology, escapist gems like The Book of Garden Flowers provide sweet sanctuary from the rough and tumble of the wider world where it can sometimes feel as though we need to shout or be perfect to be noticed and noteworthy.

'With gardening, you don’t have to take lots of time to do it and you don’t have to be experts. There’s something lovely about learning to live with nature and giving up control, learning to accept that life doesn’t have to be perfect.'

The Book of Garden Flowers, available on Amazon,is published by Thames and Hudson on May 6 in the US at $24.95. It is out now in the UK, at £16.99.