Andrew Lawson (born 19 March 1945) is a British photographer, artist and author.
Andrew Lawson (born 19 March 1945) is a British photographer, artist and author.
The fifth of six children of Sir William Lawson CBE BA FCA, he was educated at Lancing College in Sussex (Captain of the School 1963). At Pembroke College, Oxford, [1] he read medicine and was editor of The Isis Magazine,[ citation needed ] Chairman of the Art Society, and President of the College Junior Common Room.
After his BA degree he abandoned his medical studies in November 1966. Florence had been flooded, and Lawson took the first available train to the city to help with the salvage of damaged art and waterlogged books. Subsequently, from 1968 to 1972, he studied Fine Art at St Martin's School of Art in London. [2] As a painter, he has exhibited at The Royal Academy, The New Grafton Gallery and The Gallery in Cork Street. Lawson's photographic career followed his time working as a publishing Art Director, commissioning photographs to illustrate books and increasingly contributing his own pictures.
He gained recognition in the late 1980s as one of the UK's leading garden photographer promoting British gardens to the public through books and magazine contributions. Since taking up photography in his late 30s he has written and contributed to over 70 books and received numerous awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award by Garden Media Guild. [3]
Publications by Andrew Lawson include The Gardener's Book of Colour, published by Frances Lincoln. [4] His photographs accompany books by Rosemary Verey, Charles, Prince of Wales, [ citation needed ] Penelope Hobhouse, [5] Sir Roy Strong, Tom Stuart-Smith, Arabella Lennox-Boyd, David Austin, Ursula Buchan, Stephen Lacey and Mary Keen, amongst others. Andrew is donating his archive to the Garden Museum. [6]
Lawson's botanical expertise and knowledge of the history of British gardens has underpinned his career. His own two gardens have been featured in numerous publications. Lawson was perhaps the first photographer to explore the frost in the early morning and un-trodden snow in an otherwise lifeless, winter garden. Projects include books on terracotta pots in the garden (Jim Keeling [7] ); the use of art and poetry in the garden (Ian Hamilton Finley) and the development of organic gardening (HRH The Prince of Wales) [8]
Together with Jerry Harpur, Lawson founded the Professional Garden Photographers Association in 1999. The PGPA was founded following an exhibition Lawson curated at the RHS Vincent Square in 1999. This show has since developed into an annual event and evolved into the International Garden Photographer of the Year, on which Lawson was a founder member of the Board, and a judge for many years. [9]
Andrew Lawson's first solo book as author and photographer was Discover Unexpected London published in 1977, which originated from his roving around London making photographs of street oddities and arcane traditions. [10] This was followed by a book on London craftsmen, and another on English shopfronts.
In 1970 he married Briony, daughter of the writer, Ronald Duncan, and they have two daughters. They have retained West Mill, the Duncan family home in an isolated valley at Welcombe in North Devon, which they manage as a nature reserve. Here there is a particular emphasis on butterflies, which had been a childhood obsession. [11]
Alan Fred Titchmarsh HonFSE is an English gardener, broadcaster, TV presenter, poet, and novelist. After working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he established himself as a media personality through appearances on television gardening programmes. He has developed a diverse writing and broadcasting career.
Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson's The Garden. Jekyll has been described as "a premier influence in garden design" by British and American gardening enthusiasts.
Rosemary Verey, was an internationally known English garden designer, lecturer and garden writer who designed the notable garden at Barnsley House, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England.
Garden World Images, (GWI) previously known as the Harry Smith Collection, whose origins can be traced back to the early 1950s and is one of the oldest and largest library of horticultural/botanical colour photographs in the World. The library supplies images of flowers, plants and gardens to newspapers, TV shows, publishers and magazines around the world. GWI has been involved with hundreds of publications and influential books such as Dr. D. G. Hessayon's "Expert" series as well as all of the Greenfingers Guides.
The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) is awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour by the Society.
Christopher "Christo" Hamilton Lloyd, OBE was an English gardener and a gardening author of note, as the 20th-century chronicler for thickly planted, labour-intensive country gardening.
Tony Lord is a United Kingdom gardener, photographer and author. In 2005 the Royal Horticultural Society awarded him the Victoria Medal of Honour (V.M.H) for his work as a garden photographer, horticultural consultant and writer.
Beth Chatto was an English plantswoman, garden designer and author known for creating and describing the Beth Chatto Gardens near Elmstead Market in the English county of Essex. She wrote several books about gardening under specific conditions and lectured on this in Britain, North America, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Her principle of placing the right plant in the right place drew on her husband Andrew Chatto's lifelong research into garden-plant origins.
Marianne Majerus, born 1956 in Clervaux, Luxembourg, is one of Europe's leading specialist garden photographers.
Edward Augustus Bowles was a British horticulturalist, plantsman and garden writer. He developed an important garden at Myddelton House, his lifelong home at Bulls Cross in Enfield, Middlesex and his name has been preserved in many varieties of plant. The standard author abbreviation Bowles is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
David Gerald Hessayon is a British author and botanist of Cypriot descent who is known for a best-selling series of paperback gardening manuals known as the "Expert Guides" under his title Dr. D. G. Hessayon. The series started in 1958 with Be Your Own Gardening Expert and in 2008 it celebrated its 50th anniversary and the 50 millionth copy in print. They have become the best selling gardening books in history.
Paul Gervais is an American visual artist and writer, who has also published a personal memoir. His novel, Extraordinary People, was nominated for the PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1992.
Valerie Finnis (1924–2006) was a well-known British photographer, lecturer, teacher and gardener.
Andrea Jones is a garden photographer and photographs around the world for magazines, newspapers and books. She is based in Scotland.
Margery Fish was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal English cottage garden style of her period. The garden she created, at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.
Dan Pearson is an English garden designer, landscape designer, journalist, and television presenter, specialising in naturalistic perennial planting.
Tessa Traeger is a British photographer. She is known for her still life and food photography, and has worked as an advertising photographer. Her work has been published in two books of her own; included in a number of books with others on gardening and food; exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions; and is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Catherine Horwood is an English journalist, author and social historian who writes extensively on horticulture, garden design, and in fashion, the history of dress. She is the authorised biographer of the British plantswoman, garden designer, and author, Beth Chatto. Her biography, Beth Chatto: a life with plants won the European Garden Book of the Year award in 2020.
William Gregor MacKenzie ALS VMH (1904–1995) was a gardener and horticultural curator born in Scotland, where his father was head gardener at Ballimore, near Loch Fyne in Argyllshire.
Joy Larkcom is a British vegetable grower and gardening writer, known for books including Grow Your Own Vegetables and Creative Vegetable Gardening, and a campaigner for organic gardening.