One of Wild Hawthorn Press’ most popular publications is Fleur de l’Air: A Garden in Provence by Ian Hamilton Finlay. In the last ten years of his life, Finlay created Fleur de l’Air, a garden set into the sunny hills of Provence. Finlay installed about 40 of his artworks, most of which were specially commissioned for this garden. He was also asked to advise on the planting of allees, orchards of fruit trees, the re-establishment of terraces of lavender and rosemary plantations and the introduction of working bee-hives.
The book contains 128 pages and 76 b/w photographs taken with a pinhole camera by the German photographer Volkmar Herre. The camera obscura captures the images in a subtle way, revealing the garden and the artworks in a particularly ‘magical’ manner. Professor of the History and Theory of Landscape at the University of Philadelphia, wrote the Introduction to the book, and Ian’s friend and poet, , wrote a short paragraph about each artwork in the garden.
This garden is not open to the public and can only be visited via the book ‘Fleur de l’Air: A Garden in Provence by Ian Hamilton Finlay’, which documents and captures the spirit of the place and of Finlay’s works.
