Herbarium Collection
I started making herbariums to learn how to recognise wild plants - what we wrongly called weeds or “mauvaises herbes” in French. A notion Gilles Clement explains with his planetary garden or garden in movement: there are no such plants as bad plants or weeds.
It’s essential to know these common plants to start growing vegetables and flowers. I’m fascinated by the opportunity to eat many plants and make tea infused with back garden weeds.
I initially made books for my daughter (something for the future), inspired by Emily Dickson's beautiful herbariums. I have collected many plants and leaves to press.
In my garden, I have so many beautiful leaves, I wanted to keep them so I started by pressing the big cardoon leaves, selecting only the best ones. I was drawing flowers with pastels and one day I had the idea to mix both, adding colours and texture next to the pressed plants.
