Our 5 favourite floral books

From flower arranging to cooking with edible blooms

With so many gorgeous floral cookery and styling books out there, it might feel overwhelming knowing where to start. To give you a helping hand, we've rounded up our top five picks of the best. 

1. Formidable Florists

This is the latest gorgeous hardback book from one of our favourite floral stylists Isabel Palmer, who we've previously featured as part of our Expose series. In this book, bursting with beautiful imagery, Isabel meets 27 trendsetting flower artists and finds out about their backgrounds and the philosophies they live by. A truly inspiring book that will look perfect on your coffee table. 

Formidable Florists, Isabel Gilbert Palmer

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2. The Flower Workshop: Lessons in Arranging Blooms, Branches, Fruits, and Foraged Materials

This beautifully illustrated guide to flower arranging from celebrated floral designer Arelia Chezar is as covetable as it is practical. With 50 stunning floral projects to choose from, it will take you every step of the way as you build up from simple arrangements to truly spectacular displays. It will also arm you with the necessary skills you’ll need to start experimenting with your own ideas.

The Flower Workshop: Lessons in Arranging Blooms, Branches, Fruits, and Foraged Materials, Arellia Chezar


3. Cooking with Flowers: Sweet and Savoury Recipes with Rose Petals, Lilacs, Lavender, and Other Edible Flowers

Brimming with over 100 edible flower recipes, this easy-to-use cookbook offers everything from sweet violet cupcakes, pansy petal pancakes, daylily cheesecake, and rosemary flower margaritas to savoury sunflower chickpea salad, chive blossom vinaigrette, herb flower pesto, and mango orchid sticky rice.

There are also a stack of useful tips for finding, cleaning, and preparing edible blossoms and a whole range of techniques. Learn how to infuse vinegars, vodkas, sugars, frostings, jellies and jams, ice creams (and more) with the colour and flavour of your favourite flowers.

Cooking with Flowers: Sweet and Savoury Recipes with Rose Petals, Lilacs, Lavender, and Other Edible Flowers, Miche Bacher


4. The Herb and Flower Cookbook: Plant, Grow and Eat, Pip McCormac


Choose from over 60 mouth-watering recipes, from simple midweek suppers (cheesy ham and chive shepherd’s pie) to delectable dinner party desserts raspberry, rose and mint tiramisu). There is also a simple yet practical growing guide that features over 30 herbs and edible flowers, with instructions specific to each one (when, where and how to plant, when to pick and what to plant it with). Our highlight? The flavour thesaurus, which suggests the foods each herb or flower works with, the taste, and how it should be eaten.

The Herb and Flower Cookbook: Plant, Grow and EatPip McCormac


5. Styling Nature: A Masterful Approach to Floral Arrangements

Elegantly illustrated with Don Freeman's painterly photographs, flower designer Lewis Miller makes sense of the flower arranging process by breaking down each arrangement into: piece-color, composition, movement, shape and texture. The book contains other invaluable advice, including how to handle flowers and prolong the life of an arrangement. 

Styling Nature: A Masterful Approach to Floral Arrangements, Lewis Miller & Don Freeman 


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