Artist John Dyer has painted The Lost Gardens of Heligan many times and Heligan was one of his earliest inspirations as a young artist. These beautiful art posters and prints bring a selection of his paintings of the Lost Gardens of Heligan to us. The jungle garden, Italian garden and the greenhouses at Heligan are all featured.

"Over the past 25 years, John has painted most of Cornwall’s famous gardens, which have inspired some of his most magically beautiful paintings. As he was on his own voyage of discovery, it is fitting that one of the first gardens to attract him was Heligan – Tim Smit’s first great Cornish experiment in horticultural restoration and regeneration. Heligan appealed to John in several ways: the tangled, as yet untamed, jungle of palms and tree ferns recalled his Amazon experiences, and the replanting of the vegetable and fruit gardens with a rich variety of both native and non-native species piqued his growing interest in sustainable crop production. Underpinning it all was the real-life fairy tale of the garden’s gradual re-awakening from seventy years of slumber and abandonment following the First World War, a story eloquently retold in Tim Smit’s book and the accompanying Channel Four film The Lost Gardens of Heligan (Victor Gollancz and Channel Four, 1997).

John’s own mischievous take on the Heligan story was to reimagine it in its early days as a joyous romp amongst the ferns and foliage, combining the eroticism of bacchanalian celebrations with the innocence of the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Later paintings are more respectful towards Heligan’s cultivated kitchen and formal gardens, but it is evident that John feels a closer connection to the energy, profusion, colour and sculptural shapes of the wilder areas."

Kate Dinn - extract from the book about John Dyer 'Painting the Colours of the World'.