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A group of botanists in search of rare species dismiss local custom at their peril. Love in all its wildness and wonder is found clinging to crumbling chalk cliffs and growing through cracks on city streets. A scientist takes a radical step to understand her houseplant. A poet remembers her beloved flowers, and the longing for a magnificent tropical garden outlasts death.
From tokens of love to neolithic burial gifts, bridal bouquets to seasonal wreaths and healing potions to artistic masterpieces, flowers and plants have a multitude of meanings and a long and complex relationship with us. They brighten our homes and delight us in gardens and countryside, convey our emotions and symbolise the stages of our human lives. Throughout the anthology, interactions with the natural world bring opportunities for new beginnings, transformation, and a chance to heal.
This rich and wide-ranging collection celebrates the deep connection that exists between people and plants in fourteen short stories as varied, diverse, and global as the botanical world itself.
Born in New Zealand, into a family of florists, Emma Timpany studied botany for two years as part of her undergraduate degree before graduating with a degree in anthropology. She worked as a florist in New Zealand and London, and, after moving to Cornwall, ran a small flower-growing business for five years. Emma's short stories have won three awards including The Society of Authors' Tom-Gallon Trust Award. Her books include The Lost of Syros, longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize in 2016, and Travelling in the Dark, winner of the Hall and Woodhouse DLF Prize 2019. She co-edited Cornish Short Stories which was shortlisted for a Holyer an Gof Award 2019. She teaches creative writing, mentors emerging writers and works as a ghostwriter for a private autobiography company. Alongside Felicity Notley, she organises the Falmouth-based writing group Telltales, which showcases and inspires new writers.
"These short stories – about all manner of green and growing things – are tender, lyrical, and compelling. Whether real or imagined, familiar or exotic, delicate or potent, the plants and flowers depicted offer insightful meditations into the ways that the lives of plants can become entwined with our own."
– Becky Tipper, writer and reviews editor at The Short Story
"The stories are all so very different, some of them being quite compelling and tender featuring an interesting variety of voices and nationalities with a wide range of characters and settings"
– Advolly Richmond, garden writer, historian, and television presenter who regularly appears on BBC Gardener's World
"A lovely collection of short stories with plants front and centre. If you're a gardener or plant lover, then this is a book for you."
– Leif Bersweden, botanist and author of Where the Wildflowers Grow
"This is the first time I have read a fiction collection entirely around the botanical, and editor Emma Timpany has done an impressive job of selecting a range of moving, absorbing, and sometimes surprising stories."
– Hortus Journal
"Throughout this anthology, interaction with the natural world bring opportunities, new beginnings, and a chance to heal. This book is entertaining and a joy to dip in and out of."
– Countryside magazine
