Rakesprogress / 18

Welcome to the latest volume of stunning photographs and revealing stories about the art of gardens, plants and flowers as seen through the lens of rakesprogress.

Inside the new issue you will find abandoned barns and farmyards that have found new lives as homes and gardens, the botanical clues hidden in mysterious medieval tapestries, the extraordinary creations of the floral artist Emily Thompson, the therapeutic power of an Ikebana drawing club, a designer who left the fashion treadmill to rediscover his creative edge as a painter of trees, and an extraordinary landscape of topiary that is defying gravity – and box blight – to stun visitors in south west France. Plus the artist Yan Wang Preston talks about her life and work, specifically her photographs of the descendents of the Victorian ‘Rhodo craze’, a series of images that she calls a love letter to Britain and the much-maligned rhododendron.

 

 

_____

 

 

Whether you are photographing war gardens or sowing tomatoes, designing clothes in a garden house or fixing stuff in a shed, gardens are places to grow. As the marvellously direct fashion designer Nigel Cabourn told us when we interviewed him in his garden in Gosforth, 'What you've done to me today is make me realise how f***ing important this garden is to me! It's obviously influenced me without me realising it.' We know how he feels.