In Bloom

"The photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo celebrates people who make beauty their lifes work with the gorgeous IN BLOOM: Creating and Living With Flowers (Rizzoli, $45). The textile and wallpaper designer Neisha Crosland covers the walls of her London house with chinoiserie-style flowers. The potter Frances Palmer imprints clay vessels with the vivid dahlias from her Connecticut garden. The horticulturalist Umberto Pasti celebrates Moroccos rich floral history in tile and fabric. The painter Claire Basler rings rooms with floral murals in her French chateau, while in the Bronx, Livia Cetti cuts, dyes, crimps and folds paper into exquisite flower arrangements. Each place is wondrous; for those not lucky enough to have friends around to enhance life with such magic, Ngos enchanting photographs invite us in." New York Times Book Review "The first reason to buy the book is Ngoc Minh Ngo is one of the best garden photographers at work these days. She is as hypnotized as anybody by the heartbreaking simplicity of a dogwood blossom as its petals unfurl. But what sets her apart is her ability to convey with a camera how much that moment means to her." Gardenista.com "Coming out at the end of this month, In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers (Rizzoli) is the second book by Ngoc Minh Ngo on the topic of how aesthetically minded flower-loving individuals coexist with flora in their homes. Ngo, a self-taught photographer, has published her pictures widely in such major outlets as Martha Stewart Living, and in addition to being truly devoted to her topic, she has a wonderfully expansive conception of what it embraces. Her images of photographer Oberto Gili and his Italian retreat in Piedmont, for instance, include several showing his gardens lovely bounty, plus others capturing Gilis own large photographs of flowers. We also see Livia Cetti, who lives in the Bronx a borough too often overlooked by design books with the stunning paper flowers she makes. These ersatz blooms, which Cetti creates through her studio, the Green Vase, hold the eye as long as the real ones do. London artist Rachel Dein creates haunting plaster casts of flowers that enable us to see their amazing forms without the distraction of color. For those who want shots of verdant plantings, there are lush views of the Long Island and Brooklyn homes of landscape architect Miranda Brooks and her husband, architect Bastien Halard. (Brooks was recently featured in T magazine with her scheme for Vogue editor Anna Wintours garden.) With her resolutely nonliteral approach, Ngo takes her subject well beyond mere beauty and into the sublime." 1stDibs.com "Oh, the dahlias. Oh, the aged Moroccan tiles. Oh, the coppery-brown irises. In Bloom is about creative types whose work life revolves around flowers. For most of them, their lives, period, revolve around flowers. Certain flowers, all flowers, fresh flowers, dead flowers." Dallas Morning News

Ngoc Minh Ngo, the author and photographer of Bringing Nature Home, is a self-taught photographer whose work explores the intrinsic beauty of plants and nature. Her images have been published in international publications such as T Magazine, House and Garden UK, Martha Stewart Living, and Garden Design.