It has been more than a decade since Carolyne Roehm first shared her love of gardening and flower arranging. Now, for the first time ever, she turns her own photographic lens to that passion with Flowers, showcasing more than 300 images of the varieties in her abundant gardens, all captured at their most vibrant and exquisite moments throughout the season.
With a gardener’s intimate understanding and a designer’s elegant eye, Roehm shows us the flowers she has cultivated for decades in and around Weatherstone, her historic Connecticut home. While alternating dramatic close-ups with portraits of lovely arrangements and sweeping views of her land, Roehm writes with wit, emotion, and affection of what flowers have meant to her, as well as of the joys and travails of the committed gardener’s life.
What began as a casual hobby ultimately became a multi-year endeavor, as Roehm used her camera to explore the special relationship a gardener enjoys with her carefully nurtured beauties. The outcome is a remarkably personal visual essay: sumptuous, surprising, and as revealing of the sensibility behind the camera as the magnificent species that stand before it.
This beautiful objet d’art—a flower garden in a book—is Carolyne Roehm’s most significant and singular volume yet.
"Gardening is [Carolyne Roehm's] passion, and her photographs of its blowsy stars are reverent works of art. This book is nothing less than an ode to fragile, fleeting beauty, and it is utterly captivating." -Veranda
"When Flowers by Carolyne Roehm landed on my desk, I was astonished by the beautiful bloom on the cover. Against a pure white background, you can really take in all of the intricacies and subtleties of the flower, right down to the little 'hairs' on the leaves . . . With each turn of the book's massive pages, you're immersed in the the gardens Roehm photographed. I can almost smell them! . . . You won't want to miss this stunner." -Kevin Sharkey, MarthaStewart.com
"Fashion designer Carolyne Roehm’s Flowers is the epic Lawrence of Arabia of flower tomes, featuring 300 images of posies from Roehm’s abundant personal gardens in Connecticut . . . Roehm's book offers countless ideas for flower arrangement BFFs like creamy clematis and ivory roses or the inspired touch of adding strawberries to an arrangement of plump pink, peach, red and white roses. Her book is filled with the kind of visual inspiration that makes you want to dash to your own garden or supermarket and create a bouquet of your own." -HGTVGardens.com
"For this book, Roehm took on an additional task, acting not just as the stylist, but as the photographer too, taking many of the striking shots herself. As a result, Flowers is her most deeply personal--not to mention lush--book yet." -1st Dibs
"From the grande dame of elegant entertaining, Carolyne Roehm's 11th book focuses on what is often considered the ultimate finishing touch for any well-appointed table or party--flowers. Along with personally photographing a large portion of the book, Roehm masterfully relays her knowledge of the infinite details of stylish living." -Traditional Home
"[Flowers is] a big book, physically larger than most coffee table books. And it's heavy and beautifully bound . . . [Carolyne Roehm's] images say it all . . . You won’t be able to put [Flowers] down, once you open it." -New York Social Diary
"A photographic musing on lush gardens and their fleeting beauty." -New York Cottages and Gardens
"Readers are in for a real hortucultural treat . . . The over sized (gigantic in a fabulous way) book is packed with lush imagery." -StyleBeat blog
Before launching her own line of couture clothes, Carolyn Roehm worked with Oscar de la Renta. The author of five previous books, she divides her time among her exquisite homes in New York City, Paris, and Connecticut, all of which are frequently featured in the media.
View titles by Carolyne Roehm
There are two types of peonies: the herbaceous variety, consisting of individual flowers, and the deciduous shrub. Or, as I like to refer to them, the blondes and the brunettes. The blonde herbaceous ones are, like their two-legged sisters, easy to love—they’re big, blowsy, and abundant, and you just want to pull them to you, bury your nose in their crazy, flyaway petals, and inhale that sweet perfume. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, I swear on every brown hair on my head that it isn’t. Blonde peonies put me in mind of Marilyn Monroe (all right, she wasn’t a real blonde, but she had the soul of one): the flowers exude a fantastic life force—they simply explode before your eyes, and everything they are remains on display at all times. Whether you see a great swath of them in the garden or come upon their adorable heads bobbling in a vase, you understand the Marilyn peonies the moment you look at them, and your heart foods with gratitude and pleasure. Even so, I’d give a slight edge to the brunette—if the herbaceous variety belongs to Marilyn, the deciduous is Greta Garbo. The beauty of the “tree” peony, as it’s called, is less obvious, more unconventional. You have to unpack layers of mystery to fully appreciate its character; it is fascinating rather than effusive. As with poppies, the petals of a peony can be as delicate and translucent as crepe; the flower’s deep scarlets and magentas manage to be at once boldly saturated and subtly nuanced. Though it can break your heart to cut them, a single bloom in a vase will reward long contemplation. I adore my roses the most. But no flower more clearly expresses for me the presence of the spiritual in the realm of nature than this one.
It has been more than a decade since Carolyne Roehm first shared her love of gardening and flower arranging. Now, for the first time ever, she turns her own photographic lens to that passion with Flowers, showcasing more than 300 images of the varieties in her abundant gardens, all captured at their most vibrant and exquisite moments throughout the season.
With a gardener’s intimate understanding and a designer’s elegant eye, Roehm shows us the flowers she has cultivated for decades in and around Weatherstone, her historic Connecticut home. While alternating dramatic close-ups with portraits of lovely arrangements and sweeping views of her land, Roehm writes with wit, emotion, and affection of what flowers have meant to her, as well as of the joys and travails of the committed gardener’s life.
What began as a casual hobby ultimately became a multi-year endeavor, as Roehm used her camera to explore the special relationship a gardener enjoys with her carefully nurtured beauties. The outcome is a remarkably personal visual essay: sumptuous, surprising, and as revealing of the sensibility behind the camera as the magnificent species that stand before it.
This beautiful objet d’art—a flower garden in a book—is Carolyne Roehm’s most significant and singular volume yet.
Praise
"Gardening is [Carolyne Roehm's] passion, and her photographs of its blowsy stars are reverent works of art. This book is nothing less than an ode to fragile, fleeting beauty, and it is utterly captivating." -Veranda
"When Flowers by Carolyne Roehm landed on my desk, I was astonished by the beautiful bloom on the cover. Against a pure white background, you can really take in all of the intricacies and subtleties of the flower, right down to the little 'hairs' on the leaves . . . With each turn of the book's massive pages, you're immersed in the the gardens Roehm photographed. I can almost smell them! . . . You won't want to miss this stunner." -Kevin Sharkey, MarthaStewart.com
"Fashion designer Carolyne Roehm’s Flowers is the epic Lawrence of Arabia of flower tomes, featuring 300 images of posies from Roehm’s abundant personal gardens in Connecticut . . . Roehm's book offers countless ideas for flower arrangement BFFs like creamy clematis and ivory roses or the inspired touch of adding strawberries to an arrangement of plump pink, peach, red and white roses. Her book is filled with the kind of visual inspiration that makes you want to dash to your own garden or supermarket and create a bouquet of your own." -HGTVGardens.com
"For this book, Roehm took on an additional task, acting not just as the stylist, but as the photographer too, taking many of the striking shots herself. As a result, Flowers is her most deeply personal--not to mention lush--book yet." -1st Dibs
"From the grande dame of elegant entertaining, Carolyne Roehm's 11th book focuses on what is often considered the ultimate finishing touch for any well-appointed table or party--flowers. Along with personally photographing a large portion of the book, Roehm masterfully relays her knowledge of the infinite details of stylish living." -Traditional Home
"[Flowers is] a big book, physically larger than most coffee table books. And it's heavy and beautifully bound . . . [Carolyne Roehm's] images say it all . . . You won’t be able to put [Flowers] down, once you open it." -New York Social Diary
"A photographic musing on lush gardens and their fleeting beauty." -New York Cottages and Gardens
"Readers are in for a real hortucultural treat . . . The over sized (gigantic in a fabulous way) book is packed with lush imagery." -StyleBeat blog
Author
Before launching her own line of couture clothes, Carolyn Roehm worked with Oscar de la Renta. The author of five previous books, she divides her time among her exquisite homes in New York City, Paris, and Connecticut, all of which are frequently featured in the media.
View titles by Carolyne Roehm
Excerpt
There are two types of peonies: the herbaceous variety, consisting of individual flowers, and the deciduous shrub. Or, as I like to refer to them, the blondes and the brunettes. The blonde herbaceous ones are, like their two-legged sisters, easy to love—they’re big, blowsy, and abundant, and you just want to pull them to you, bury your nose in their crazy, flyaway petals, and inhale that sweet perfume. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, I swear on every brown hair on my head that it isn’t. Blonde peonies put me in mind of Marilyn Monroe (all right, she wasn’t a real blonde, but she had the soul of one): the flowers exude a fantastic life force—they simply explode before your eyes, and everything they are remains on display at all times. Whether you see a great swath of them in the garden or come upon their adorable heads bobbling in a vase, you understand the Marilyn peonies the moment you look at them, and your heart foods with gratitude and pleasure. Even so, I’d give a slight edge to the brunette—if the herbaceous variety belongs to Marilyn, the deciduous is Greta Garbo. The beauty of the “tree” peony, as it’s called, is less obvious, more unconventional. You have to unpack layers of mystery to fully appreciate its character; it is fascinating rather than effusive. As with poppies, the petals of a peony can be as delicate and translucent as crepe; the flower’s deep scarlets and magentas manage to be at once boldly saturated and subtly nuanced. Though it can break your heart to cut them, a single bloom in a vase will reward long contemplation. I adore my roses the most. But no flower more clearly expresses for me the presence of the spiritual in the realm of nature than this one.
