Gardens are full of history, she says. Hollyhocks came back from the Holy Land with Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward 1, in the thirteenth century. In the eighteenth century, French rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard painted them in a series called The Progress of Love.
Zinnia is named after eighteenth century botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn and was originally designated as a rudbeckia. Linnaeus disproved this theory and the Marchioness of Bute introduced the plant to Britain in 1796. African American folk artist Clementine Hunter (1887-1988) painted the flowers. She couldn't read or write when she found some paints and brushes in middle age and became a pioneering black artist. Stories like this bring the book to life.
Armed with the plethora of facts and tales in the book, you will have plenty to say next time you show someone your blooms or happen upon them in a garden or garden centre.
