In the quiet corners of the RHS Lindley Library lies a treasure trove of 19th-century floral artistry – over 300 delicate watercolours by a woman whose name is barely known beyond the margins of botanical art history
Karl Theodor Hartweg was the Horticultural Society’s seventh plant collector, spending several years travelling around Central and South America between 1836 and 1843.
Scottish botanist George Don was the Horticultural Society’s second plant collector. He travelled along the western coast of Africa and the eastern coasts of the Americas in the 1820s.
Find out more about Lilian Snelling, “the greatest botanical artist of her time”, and explore hundreds of her artworks held at the RHS Lindley Library.
There are 2,500 varieties of apple in the UK, and a thousand varieties of pears. How did we organise and record so many fruit varieties before the invention of photography?
Discover the remarkable paintings of Harmanis de Alwis, the Sri Lankan botanical artist whose artworks continue to inform botanical scholarship today, over a century after his death.
The Vegetable Garden Displayed, the RHS’s guide to growing vegetables produced for the Dig for Victory campaign, remains the Society’s most successful publication ever. Find out how the RHS helped to keep Britain fed during the Second World War.