My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece. Claude Monet
In 2024 I set out to make a watercolor bouquet of the flowers in my garden in the style of 18th century Pieter Casteels III. We know them as the ubiquitous engravings, the classic “Twelve Months of Flowers”.
Each month I would sketch in watercolor the flowers that came into bloom and started to create one painting for the year of flowers. Placement was in a planned/random manner trying to anticipate how many blooms, colors and sizes I might have at the end of the garden blooming season.
Here is a look at some of the blooms and monthly progress.
The paper was 30 x 22 inches, I kept it on the wall and each month took it down to add the months blooms. Mechanical pencil, watercolors and watercolor pencils were used over the 9-month process. It was a more disciplined and difficult process than I first anticipated… with rewarding results.
Once the garden was dormant I worked to completed the painting by adding details in color pencil and reverse painting to make the individual flowers show off. Then I took the original to a large format scanning shop where they created a high-quality jpeg for use in printing.
The jpeg was used to print various types of fabric at Spoonflower. This shows a sheer yardage to be used as I try my hand at making a ‘Half Tester’ for a room that looks out to the garden.
The original painting now hangs in my library and is a joy to see each day. It was a painting that required persistence, stylistic judgement and some luck to turn out so lovely. A grand statement to gardening and ‘persistence’.
This year I will be creating a Herbarium of my garden. That means pages of sketched and pressed garden plant specimens with identification notes. Then I will bind the pages into a book using my (newly acquired) bookbinding skills.
P.S. The Garden bouquet now in my little home library.
Own Your Encore 
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