Life with Flowers

Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden

Coming Soon

Contributors

By Frances Palmer

Foreword by Erin Benzakein

Formats and Prices

Price

$35.00

Price

$46.00 CAD

Format

Hardcover

Format:

Hardcover $35.00 $46.00 CAD

In this follow-up Life in the Studio, potter, gardener, and photographer Frances Palmer celebrates the flowers she most loves to grow and arrange. 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 and arranging techniques hard-won over decades of growing and photographing her flowers–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 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, beloved potter, gardener, photographer, and cook, has written a personal tale of the flowers she grows and displays in every season with charmingly instructive detail.”
    —PAGE DICKEY, author and director emeritus of the Garden Conservancy
  • “No one grows and arranges flowers with the same enchanting, joyful spirit as Frances. What a gift then to devour her new book, basking in the floral glow of each and every variety she loves, her creative touchstones, and that coveted list of nurseries and suppliers! Flower lovers, prepare for peak inspiration. My heart was ablaze with each turn of the page.” 
    —AMY MERRICK, florist and author of On Flowers
  • “Whether you find blooms out your front door or never pick up a trowel but love to fill vases, this gorgeous book of beautiful blooms, artful arrangements, and wise words is an inspiration. It’s guaranteed to bring on flower lust, lift your spirits, and nourish your soul.”
    —DOMINIQUE BROWNING, author and founder and director of Moms Clean Air Force
  • “Who better to show us how to arrange flowers? Frances Palmer not only grows buckets of them, but she also creates beautifully distinct vessels that make you pay attention to every twisting stem and folding petal of these glorious plants.”
    —STEPHEN ORR, author of The New American Herbal

On Sale
May 13, 2025
Page Count
288 pages
Publisher
Artisan
ISBN-13
9781648291395

Frances Palmer

Frances Palmer

About the Author

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 Steward 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.

Learn more about this author