We’re very excited to welcome Caroline Ball for an illustrated talk and discussion on her latest book A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti, published in March by Bodleian Library Publishing.

Caroline will be in conversation with botanical artist Lesley Ann Sandbach about a rare treasure of a book from the Bodleian archives that reveals some surprises about the history of succulents. Caroline Ball’s talk will cover fascinating stories, habits and uses, from Aztec hallucinogens and smuggling to succulents’ unexpected potential today and in the future.  We may no longer look to succulents to treat gangrene or manufacture glass, but they are proving of great interest to modern medicine and agriculture, and we can marvel at them afresh, not only as wonders of nature but also as works of art.

A Q&A will follow with the audience. Copies of A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti will be available for sale and signing.

The Carnivorous & Succulent Plants Glasshouse of the Garden will be open to explore ahead the start of the talk.

This talk is part of our Chelsea Physic Garden’s 350 anniversary year.

Booking Information:

Tickets are £25 per person

(Concessions: £20 per person)

(Concessions: Students, Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Refugee Status, and Asylum Seekers)

This event will take place in our first floor ‘Gallery’, unfortunately this space is not wheelchair accessible. Please email if you would like to discuss accessibility.

Tickets include entry to the Garden. No discounts for members.

The Speakers:

Caroline Ball

Caroline Ball has written on many subjects, but has a particular interest in horticulture, garden history and plant-hunters. She is a keen gardener.  A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti is the second in a series, Illustrations from an eighteenth-century botanical treasury. Also available is A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables. Bodleian Library Publishing published her Heritage Apples which won Garden Writers Guild Practical Garden Book of the Year 2020.

Lesley Ann Sandbach

[pic credit] Reproduced by kind permission of Hampton Court Palace

Lesley Ann Sandbach’s Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’, painted for the Hampton Court Palace Florilegium Society, of which she was chair for six years. Lesley Ann has exhibited in London and New York, and as well as being an established artist herself, she is an admirer of the botanical works of the great eighteenth-century artist Georg Ehret, who plays a part in the story of aloes and other succulents that Caroline will be telling.