A Queen's Book of Flowers
In 1629, John Parkinson, the royal herbalist to Charles I, dedicated his new book of flowers to the king’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. Here, you can read about the book and see ten of the flowers that he suggested could be 'noursed vp' in the English air.
Henrietta Maria
1609 - 1669
Henrietta Maria was the daughter of Henri IV of France and his wife Marie de Medici. In 1625 she married Charles I, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. She had beautiful gardens at Somerset House and other palaces such as Wimbledon.
Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers ... (1629)
John Parkinson dedicated his book about flowers growing in England in the early 1600s to the twenty-year-old queen. Was he hoping to gain favour? Was the young Henrietta Maria's love of gardens already known? Or was Parkinson aware that associating the queen with flowers was a way to compliment her beauty and loveliness? The book makes it clear that flowers should be enjoyed by everyone, but its instructions about how and where to grow flowers were often directed at ladies.
About the Exhibition
31 May - 31 June 2025
St Anthony's Hall Garden @
Thin Ice Press,
Peasholme Green,
York
YO1 7PW
With the kind support of Thin Ice Press and York Conservation Trust.
This exhibition reinterprets ten of the flowers in Parkinson's book using traditional letterpress printing methods. Each flower is accompanied by its original illustration, putting you in the shoes of Queen Henrietta Maria as she read about these flowers hot off the press. All of the flowers chosen for this exhibition are 'strangers' to England, plants brought from foreign shores, many recently through England's expanding trade and empire. Exotic flowers were easy to carry on ships and while many of these may look like harmless beauties, they were part of a wider imperial design to make money from natural resources. Some of the flowers here did exactly this - such as tobacco. Placed here in this 'English' garden, the flowers encourage us to look at them as if we are coming across them for the first time. What did the queen know about her new plants? Would she have been proud to grow them in her garden?
The exhibition has been created by Susannah Lyon-Whaley, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of York. Susannah's research focuses on how seventeenth-century Stuart queens - including Henrietta Maria - engaged with the natural world from overseas.
Choose a flower to learn more ...
