COLOUR IN THE GARDEN. Plants and Shrubs, Their Uses, Culture and Colour-Grouping. A Book for Amateurs.

First edition, first printing. Constance Spry's copy. Original beige linen boards with titles, decorations and ruled borders printed in black and green on the spine and upper board. Illustrated throughout with botanical colour plates by Millie Walters Anson. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth toned and marked, the corners bumped, the cloth with some splitting at the spine. With Constance Spry's ownership inscription to the front free endpaper, a small bookseller's label to the rear pastedown, a tiny numerical stamp to the foot of the rear free endpaper and some spotting early and late, the contents are otherwise clean throughout. A fantastic association copy.

Constance Spry's copy, with her large, flamboyant signature in thick pencil on the front free endpaper. The gardener Maud Evelyn Stebbing's fourth book, a guide to the use of colour in garden design that, unusually, groups plants and flowers by colour rather than species or position. Constance Spry was a florist, teacher and cookery writer who revolutionised the art of floristry in the early 20th century with innovative, cascading shapes and the use of unconventional, 'common' plants such as bindweed and, most famously, chard leaves. The Duchess of Kent once reportedly asked Spry to leave her signature chard leaves out of an arrangement because her mother, the Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna, was visiting and "might not understand". Spry and Stebbing were active in the same period, with Spry's first book, 'Flower Decoration', being published in the same year as 'Colour in the Garden'. It is easy to see how Stebbing's emphasis on colour and visual harmony would have been a useful resource for Spry's creative approach to floristry. Spry's designs became highly fashionable in upper-class British society, and she provided the floral arrangements for four royal weddings, including that of Queen Elizabeth II, as well as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In the 1930s Spry was in a relationship with the painter Gluck, who frequently painted Spry's experimental arrangements. In 1946 Spry founded a cookery school in London with her friend Rosemary Hume. Spry, Hume and their students were tasked with catering the banquet for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and created the now famous dish coronation chicken for the event. Spry continued to write about and practice floristry while also devoting time to cookery writing and teaching until her death in 1960.