The ''Highgrove Florilegium: Watercolours depicting plants grown in the garden at Highgrove'' is a two-volume book of

botanical illustration Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in boo ...

s recording plants in the garden of

Charles III Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...

, the then

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales (, ; ) is a title traditionally given to the male heir apparent to the History of the English monarchy, English, and later, the British throne. The title originated with the Welsh rulers of Kingdom of Gwynedd, Gwynedd who, from ...

, at

Highgrove House Highgrove House is the family residence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. It lies southwest of Tetbury in Gloucestershire, England. Built in the late 18th century, Highgrove and its estate were owned by various families until it was pu ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The volumes, published in 2008 and 2009, contain 124

watercolours Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the S ...

painted by invited leading

botanical artists Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in boo ...

from around the world. The colour plates are reproduced in their original size from watercolour drawings. The publication is a limited edition of 175 sets, each signed by the Prince and all the

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

from the Highgrove Florilegium are donated to The Prince's Charities Foundation. The text is by Christopher Humphries and Frederick J. Rumsey and the preface is by the Prince of Wales. The publisher is Addison Publications. Each set is accompanied by a handmade green felt book cover with maroon ties.

Book production

Design

The book contains original sketches of motifs from the garden at Highgrove decorate the text and the end papers. The decorative motifs include plants in the garden, the Princes' treehouse, the dove cote and the flock of Indian Runner

Ducks Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family (biology), family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and goose, geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfam ...

Printing

The printing of both the text and the image pages used stochastic

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...

in order to create outstanding quality prints from the original watercolours. Stochastic lithography is an advancement in printing technology that can give a better print quality, cleaner more dynamic and accurate colour images, and reduce running waste. Whereas conventional lithography uses half-tone dots of various sizes and spaces these dots at the same distance from each other, stochastic lithography uses microdots of a common size of various spacing according to tonal value. Stochastic screening uses smaller printing dots to create a higher image detail. Tonal ranges and colour contrasts are also improved because the variation in dot distribution increases ink densities. The images were printed on 245

gsm The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

American Cotton paper for the colour plates and on 175 gsm Somerset Bookwove text paper. The text is set in Fairbank and

Bembo Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Imaging, Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the "Serif#Old-style, old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or ro ...

book types.

Bookbinding

The books are half-bound in red goatskin with marbled paper boards and sprinkled edges. The pages were collated and sewn by hand. That is, after the text and plate pages were soft folded, holes were punched into them for the sewing needle. Then the pages were sewn and the boards of the book cover were laced on. The collated and sewn books are hand finished with embossed hand tooled leather motifs and

gold leaf upA gold nugget of 5 mm (0.2 in) in diameter (bottom) can be expanded through hammering into a gold foil of about 0.5 m2 (5.4 sq ft). The Japan.html" ;"title="Toi gold mine museum, Japan">Toi gold mine museum, Japan. Gold leaf is gold that has ...

tooling on the spine.

Marbling

Each sheet of paper was hand marbled separately using the traditional technique of sprinkling the colours onto a viscous fluid prepared from Carragheen moss and manipulating a pattern in the paint using a

stylus A stylus is a writing utensil or tool for scribing or marking into softer materials. Different styluses were used to write in cuneiform by pressing into wet clay, and to scribe or carve into a wax tablet. Very hard styluses are also used to En ...

. The paper is carefully lowered onto the floating pattern and then lifted, rinsed and hung out to dry. Each pattern on each piece of paper must be controlled to check they are the same.

Artists

Each plate is signed by the artist and blind embossed to record the copyright of A.G. Carrick Ltd, with the plate and edition numbers added in pencil. *Beverly Allen (b. Sydney, Australia) *Helen Allen FLS (b. London, England) *Fay Ballard (b. Twickenham, England) *Caroline Barber (b. Bristol, England) *Isobel Bartholomew (b. Birmingham, England) *Stephanie Berni (b. Bristol, England) *Evelyn Binns (b. Orpington, England) *Valerie Bolas (b. Dover, England) *Marie-Christine Bouvier (b. Geneva, Switzerland) *Dr Valerie Bradburn (b. Sidcup, England) *Jenny Brasier (b. Alvechurch, England) *Dr Andrew Brown (b. Carshalton, England) *Jane Bruce (b. London, England) *Elizabeth Cadman (b. Chelmsford, England) *Diana Carmichael (b. Penrhyn Bay, Wales) *Gillian Condy (b. Kenya) *Jill Coombs (b. Horsham, England) *Joanna Craig-McFeely (b. Beckenham, England) *Celia Crampton (b. Nyasaland, now Malawi) *Sally Crosthwaite (b. Woking, England) *Brigitte E.M. Daniel b. Beaconsfield, England) *Rachael Dawson (b. Dronfield, England) *Angélique de Folin (b. Paris, France) *Elisabeth Dowle (b. London, England) *Kate Nessler (b. St Louis (MI), United States) *Anne O’Connor (b. Sydney, Australia) *Susan Ogilvy (b. Kent, England) *John Pastoriza-Piñol (b. Melbourne, Australia) *Annie Patterson (b. RAF Halton, England) *Juliet Percy (b. Bromley, England) * Jenny Phillips (b. Victoria, Australia) *Josephine Elwes (b. London, England) *Kate Evans (b. Liverpool, England) *The Hon. Gillian Foster (b. Dumfries, Scotland) *Yvonne Glenister Hammond (b. London, England) *Sarah Gould (b. Leicester, England) *Lucinda Mary Grant (b. London, England) *Josephine Hague (b. Liverpool, England) *Ann Judith Harris-Deppe (b. Accra, Ghana) *Noriko Hasegawa (b. Tokyo, Japan) *Mayumi Hashi (b. Nara, Japan) *Mieko Ishikawa (b. Tokyo, Japan) *Junko Iwata (b. Nagoya, Japan) *Jenny Jowett (b. Bromley, England) *Yumi Kamataki (b. Chiba, Japan) *Christabel King (b. London, England) *Margaret King MBE, JP (b. Zimbabwe) *Kumiko Kosuda (b. Miyagi Prefecture, Japan) *Flappy Lane Fox (b. Farnborough, England) *Chrissie Lightfoot (b. London, England) *Fiona McKinnon (b. Darlinghurst, Australia) *Katherine Manisco (b. London, England) *Jill Mayhew (b. Essex, England) *Kay Rees-Davies (b. Brighton, England) *Janet Rieck (b. Chicago, United States) *Lizzie Sanders (b. London, England) *Elaine Searle (b. Birmingham, England) *Sheila Siegerman (b. Kamloops, Canada) *Sally Strawson (b. Yorkshire, England) *Susanna Stuart-Smith (b. Birmingham, England) *Jessica TcherepnineArtist Jessica Tcherepnine
/ref> (b. London, England) *Vicki Thomas (b. South Africa) *Noriko Tobita (b. Kanagawa-Ken, Japan) *Erico Tosaki (b. Kawasaki, Japan) *Sally Townshend (b. East London, South Africa) *Sally Vincent (b. Leicestershire, England) *Anita Walsmit Sachs-Jansen (b. Den Haag, The Netherlands) *Amanda Ward (b. London, England) *Hazel West-Sherring (b. Kingston upon Hull, England) *Jennifer Wilkinson (b. Launceston, Australia) *Susan Worthington (b. Stratford, New Zealand) *Jane Wright (b. Dorchester, England)

Purchase and display

The book has been purchased by a range of institutions, including: *libraries (e.g.

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

;

National Library of Scotland The National Library of Scotland (NLS; ; ) is one of Scotland's National Collections. It is one of the largest libraries in the United Kingdom. As well as a public programme of exhibitions, events, workshops, and tours, the National Library of ...

; RHS Lindley Library) *botanical gardens (e.g. Filoli;

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies ...

;

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

;

Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV) are botanical garden, botanic gardens across two sites–Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Melbourne and Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, Cranbourne. Melbourne Gardens was founded in 1846 when land w ...

;

Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney is a heritage-listed major botanical garden, event venue and public recreation area located at Farm Cove on the eastern fringe of the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government are ...

) * museums (e.g.

Auckland War Memorial Museum The Auckland War Memorial Museum (), also known as Auckland Museum, is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its neoclassical architecture, neoclassical building constructed in the 1920s and 1950s, stands on Observatory ...

;

Canterbury Museum, Christchurch The Canterbury Museum is a museum located in the Christchurch Central City, central city of Christchurch, New Zealand, in the city's Cultural Precinct. The museum was established in 1867 with Julius von Haast – whose collection formed its co ...

;

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

; Teyler's Museum, The Netherlands) *universities (e.g.

University of Johannesburg The University of Johannesburg, colloquially known as UJ, is a public university A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is State ownership, owned by the state or receives significant fundi ...

;

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

;

University of South Africa The University of South Africa (UNISA) is the largest university system in South Africa by enrollment. It attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. Through various colleges and affiliates, UNISA has over 400,000 student ...

) Some of these institutions have put the books on display for public exhibition.

References

{{Reflist Botany books Botanical art Botany in Europe Charles III