Meet Karl Simmons, RCP Garden Artist in Residence.

A man dressed in black with short grey hair and glasses stands in front of a large leafy green plant, smiling at the camera.

Karl pruning a Myrtus plant.

I studied Fine Art Painting at Saint Martin’s School of Art followed by a post graduate printmaking course at the Central School of Art, I then worked as an Art teacher for nearly 30 years.

The urge to sketch and record painting and is a wonderfully creative vehicle for my interest in plants and garden design history. After I retired from teaching I pursued these interests through the garden design course at Capel Manor in Regent’s Park. I would walk pastthe garden at the RCP on my way to college and curiosity led me to explore further and to meet Jane Knowles, the head gardener.

I began as a garden volunteer at the RCP in the autumn of 2018. From the beginning I have kept a series of small diaries, that have allowed me to record information about the plants and note down advice and instruction from Jane. I then started to add small sketches.

Page showing multiple small sketches of plants and insects.

A page of Karl's sketches.

In March 2020 as the country went into lockdown in response to the Covid crisis, the garden of medicinal plants closed its gates to all but NHS staff looking for a place of respite. Along with a skeleton staff taking care of the buildings and the hotel, only the head gardener came to work on site. The rest of the small team of gardeners and volunteers had to stay at home. Wanting to share the beauty of the garden and to remain connected, Jane began to share photographs with the garden team via a WhatsApp group.

These pictures inspired me to create corresponding artwork. Gradually the plant profiles of image and text grew to fill three sketchbooks. Jane saw the potential of this work for illustrating garden booklets and information sheets. With Jane’s encouragement I also went on to develop colour sketches for the RCP garden calendars.

The RCP Garden is a special place. It provides a refuge of calm: its attractive layout and the grouping of plants make it horticulturally interesting and there is another layer of interest to be found concerning medicinal plant history and current medicinal treatments. The desire to discover and learn more leads me to concentrate on drawing in specific areas. One recent project led to the creation of information sheets to explain the relevance of the wild garden.

The wild garden is located at the base of the Oriental plane tree in the centre of the Royal College of Physicians. The initial intention of this project was to record and sketch the life cycle of the plants here. I am still amazed at how this area changes through the seasons. The yellow flowers of Eranthis hyemalis in the winter die and are succeeded by others such as Medicago sativa and stinging nettles, Urtica dioica. As the work progressed it was the relationship between fauna and flora which became the main focus of observation.

The drawings in the sketchbook were developed into larger visitor information sheets to illustrate the life of the wild garden and to show that, while this area is managed differently to the rest of the garden and provides a different service, it is as important as the more curated areas of the garden.

Cover of a booklet titled: A guide to the Pharmacopoea Londonensis beds, with illistrations of plants.

The cover of "A guide to the Pharmacopoea Londonensis beds"

My current project focuses on the 8 small gardens in front of House 1-8. These are the Pharmacopoea Londinensis beds and showcase plants authorised for use as medicines in the college’s first Pharmacopoea Londinensis (1618).

These gardens were created in 2007 by Jane Knowles. For me they are the heart of the garden, a unique set of designs which are unmatched for their detail and comprehensive arrangement. They are wonderful to draw as they have an attractive framework of formal Box hedges contrasting with looser informal planting. The plants in each of the houses represents a different category according to the part of the plant used (flowers, roots, foliage etc). The plan is to use these sketches for the next garden calendar. I am hoping that it will be seen as a celebration of these gardens and of my relationship with the college and the garden team, and I will have recorded another encounter with this wonderful garden!

Karl Simmons

RCP Garden Artist in Residence

Composite image of three pages of small colour sketches of plants, flowers and insects.

Karl's Sketches of plants and insects in the RCP garden

Library, Archive and Museum

Related pages

A ‘weapon dressed as a book’: the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis

Plants and the lungs: an RCP medicinal garden trail

‘A pocket full of posies’: Plague and potions in the RCP medicinal garden

Sir Thomas Browne’s plants: a garden trail

Garden tours