Hortus Poeticus

Branding, packaging, website & collateral design

Hortus Poeticus invited me to their beautiful floral studio to work with them to express their brand story through a series of projects from visual identity, packaging, website, collateral, and content. Gillie founded her Hampshire flower farm, Hortus Poeticus, in 2019, following life long love affair for flowers, with Fi, equally enamoured, joining in 2021. Both share a deep regard for growing flowers ethically and with the utmost care and have become one of our Island’s most exciting growers of English flowers, available to all who love them. Hortus Poeticus have quickly established themselves as serious growers, with a leading voice, in the world of home-grown flowers.

“ Many flowers on our kitchen tables, with some honourable exceptions, have a dubious ethical and environmental footprint. We spend £2.2 billion a year in the UK on flowers, almost all imported with incumbent flower miles, despite having a climate that can produce wonderful flowers for more than nine months. Thankfully there is a brave and growing band of flower growers determined to change that in the UK today ”

It was clear that authenticity, practicality, and integrity should be at the heart of the brand messaging. After lots of joyful and insightful deliberation, we landed on the perfect summation that was clear, true and memorable: Hortus Poeticus - growers, purveyors, and arrangers of exceptional English flowers. We looked to other forms of creativity for inspiration; art galleries, design books, and the beauty of language, specifically within poetry. As well as possessing a high aesthetic sensibility, the brand has a vital cerebral element - expressed through copy and design language referencing books and libraries - with a distinctive bookmark, flower care card, and ex-Libris style labelling.

The logo design, the name letterpress printed in Garamond and enclosed in a rectangle, references the Latin meaning of the brand name, ‘Hortus’, as a walled or enclosed garden and echoes the look and feel of traditional horticultural labelling styles. We rested on scaling up the logo in the application, counter-intuitively to most current signifiers of quiet luxury, which tend to favour almost invisible branding, to communicate the generosity at the heart of Hortus Poeticus boldly. Detail is another cornerstone of Hortus’ brand language, which expresses itself through all choices and nuances; for example, the typesetting is always set to replicate the layout styles found in old books and mostly pamphlets - with narrow columns - ensuring that text layout is both aesthetically pleasing and supportive of the reading process.

The farm, its situation, the stunning views, and the surrounding countryside served as a visual counterpoint to the typography. The flowers are grown mainly in the open on south-facing fields deep in Hampshire, set within the sweeping scenes of the South Downs. Situated within acres of carefully tended flowerbeds, with views stretching out to Old Winchester Hill, an area rich in archaeology and home to a wide variety of plants and wildlife, it was clear that the landscape should be integral to the brand language. So ‘ Of the Earth’ became our guiding beacon, translated into a woodcut illustration of the rolling hills and trees nearby, an earthy tonal palette, and thoughtful material choices - all packaging has been sourced with eco credentials in mind are strictly compostable. Gillie and Fi are not only outstanding growers and arrangers, but they also have a vast wealth of knowledge from the challenges in the industry surrounding actual seasonality, mass production, and sustainability to the history of growing, as well as art, culture, and design which they share with hearty good grace.

It’s always a pleasure to visit with them periodically and see what’s been happening - there’s always lots of progress and growth, whether the actual plants or the business itself. Having laid a solid foundation with the brand architecture, the elements inhabit the spirit of an ancient stone and remain steadfast, bearing witness to the passing seasons of a growing business. Discover more at www.hortuspoeticus.com as well as Gillie’s beautifully composed telling of the brand story Song of the Earth here.