Bedgebury Florilegium - Hardcover

by Christina Harrison (Author), Dan Luscombe (Author), Simon Toomer (Foreword by)

A celebration of the Bedgebury Florilegium exhibition at Kew for the centenary of Bedgebury National Pinetum.

Founded in 1925, Bedgebury National Pinetum was established through a pioneering partnership with the Forestry Commission and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In celebration of its centenary, this book features twenty stunning botanical paintings by the Bedgebury National Pinetum Florilegium Society, showcasing the beauty and scope of the trees in the collection.

Following the First World War, Kew conifer expert William Dallimore noticed that years of increasing industrial pollution in London were adversely impacting the growth of the trees and went in search of a better environment to house Kew's conifer collection. With varied topography and a mixture of soil types, Bedgebury proved to be ideal, and the first planting of trees grown at Kew took place there in 1925. Today, Bedgebury is home to nearly 12,000 tree specimens and is a center for conifer science and conservation.

At the heart of this book are the botanical paintings by the Bedgebury National Pinetum Florilegium Society. Founded in 2008, this group of botanical artists is dedicated to documenting the Pinetum's remarkable plant collection through scientifically accurate and artistically stunning illustrations.

Complete with a foreword by Simon Toomer, Kew's Curator of Living Collections, and an introduction by Bedgebury Collections Manager Dan Luscombe that provides an overview of the Pinetum today, Christina Harrison's text offers a charming history of Dallimore and Bedgebury.

Author Biography

Christina Harrison (Hourigan) is an author and garden historian. She is currently completing an AHRC Techne-funded PhD with Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, researching the cultural history of Kew's arboretum and its tree collections. Prior to this, she worked at Kew for twenty-one years in interpretation and publishing. She is the author of Kew's Big Trees and The Botanical Adventures of Joseph Banks, also published by Kew, and coauthor of Remarkable Trees, Treasured Trees, Bizarre Botany, and the forthcoming Among the Giants: A Year at the Kew Arboretum. Dan Luscombe is collections manager at Bedgebury National Pinetum, where he has worked for twenty-five years. He has a National Trust Horticulture Apprenticeship and an HND in Horticulture. His passion for trees has taken him around the world, working with partners to protect and conserve rare and endangered species.