‘It can take three days to paint one leaf’: The extraordinary, painstaking lives of Chelsea Physic Garden’s Florilegium Society artists

Tucked away down a side street near the Embankment, surrounded by a high brick wall, lies one of London’s hidden treasures. Since 1673, the Chelsea Physic Garden (below) has been home to an array of specimen plants, prized for their medicinal and useful qualities and carefully tended to provide a resource for study, learning and enjoyment.

Purchasing an annual membership feels like joining a secret society (you gain access to this four-acre oasis an hour before it opens to the general public); yet even long-standing friends of the garden might be unaware of another intriguing organisation that operates within its grounds.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society (CPGFS) is an association of some of the country’s top botanical illustrators, united by the ambitious quest to make a visual record of all the plants in the physic garden, of which there are some 5,000 in total.

The society was set up by Margaret King in 1995, after she’d retired from a long career in the fashion industry. A former director at British clothing brand Aquascutum, King went on to become Margaret Thatcher’s stylist, helping to register the UK’s first female prime minister on global best-dressed lists.

She began volunteering at the Chelsea Physic Garden, then heard that it was hosting a year-long course in botanical drawing and decided to join. Eventually, having enjoyed it so much and made such good friends with the other artists, King suggested that they continue to regularly meet up at the garden.

‘One of the reasons I started the Florilegium Society is because botanical artists lead very, very lonely lives when they’re working,’ she explains. ‘It can take three days to paint one leaf and, if you’re doing it accurately, you’ve got to use microscopes and magnifying glasses. For instance, you have to measure between each joint of the stem and you need to find the precise shades of green, so it’s an exact copy of the flower or the plant you have in front of you.’

Botanical illustration has a long and fascinating history. Before photography, it was the sole means of identifying plants and, as such, it was highly prized. During the Age of Exploration, botanists went out on ships to collect exotic specimens, so the ability to accurately draw what they found was invaluable, particularly as so many of the delicate plants were unable to survive the long sea journeys.

Even today, it still holds an important place in botany — a good illustration will be produced exactly to scale, the colours perfectly accurate, with all stages and parts of the plant recorded from bud to fruit and from root to tip.

Each year, the Florilegium Society consults with the head gardener to select one particular plant that they feel is worth recording and the members then embark on the lengthy process of painting it at different stages of its annual cycle. The finished piece is donated to the Chelsea Physic Garden for its archive and to raise funds by licensing the image for use on products such as greeting cards.

The artists have the rare privilege of being able to take home cuttings — vital, as all plants will vary slightly depending on their growing conditions and might behave quite differently depending on the location.

Given that the artists are based across the UK, this can mean getting creative when it comes to safely transporting the precious cuttings home. Everything from plastic bottles to supermarket freezer bags are deployed to ensure the plants don’t wilt or become damaged en route.

Throughout the year, the society will meet about nine times to work on its chosen subject. Occasionally, the process might take even longer. ‘I’ve been working on a painting of a magnolia tree for three years because I was waiting for a seed pod and none of the horticultural team had ever seen one before,’ says Mary Ellen Taylor, the society’s chairperson. ‘Then, unbelievably, it finally produced them last March, so I was able to finish it.’

Taylor, who was born in New York, US, has traversed the world for her artistic commissions, producing a series of works showing the endangered birds of the Galapagos Islands. She also travelled to Transylvania as part of a group of artists selected to paint Romanian wildflowers for a florilegium commissioned by The King, then Prince of Wales.

Several other society members were involved in the project, such as Andrew Brown, who also contributed artwork to The Highgrove Florilegium, which records the many plants growing at the monarch’s Gloucestershire residence. Some of the 60 or so current members are involved in other specialist art forms, as well as botanical illustration, such as Gillian Barlow, who paints heraldry at London’s College of Arms alongside her exquisite depictions of flowers.

Most of the members have been involved with the society for years — some from the start — and, although the numbers have fluctuated over time, ebbing particularly during the pandemic, they’re on the rise once more. It’s clear that the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society nurtures a very special sense of camaraderie and purpose, helping to keep this form of art alive. Long may it flourish.

Visit the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society website for more information.