The Royal Horticultural Society has unveiled brand-new artwork to support the continuing expansion of its licensing campaign and offer licensees new, on-trend options. This new extension to the highly successful RHS Licensing Style Guide is called the RHS Licensing Geometric Style Guide 2018.

The 22 new patterns in the guide, with evocative style names such as Pathways, Fleury, Dandy, Dance and Hearts, were created to reflect the current trend for geometric designs – but the inspiration for the patterns is far from recent. They are inspired by two formal garden design styles dating from the 1600s and 1700s. Called Knot Garden and Parterre, both these styles were the basis of elegant and beautiful geometric designs applied to many legendary gardens.

While most of the original gardens have been lost, the RHS Lindley Library contains many artworks displaying the original garden plans and planting layouts that inspired these amazing places, patterns that are now being offered to new and existing licensees for the creation of packaging, home textiles, gifts, ceramics, clothing, stationery and much more.

The success of the RHS licensing campaign since its reinvention in 2015 is in no small measure due to the charity’s style guide. Licensees already have access to 1,000 cut-out images of flowers, foliage, fruit, vegetables, birds, animals, insects and patterns featured in the RHS Licensing Style Guide. They can also seek inspiration from over 25,000 original artworks for the RHS Lindley Library, the world’s finest collection of botanical art and thousands of photographic images.

And now there is also the RHS Licensing Geometric Style Guide 2018. The new artwork is part of an overall brand update unveiled to licensees at a special Licensing Reception held at RHS Garden Wisley on 25 June. The event summarised the brand’s evolution and introduced a brand update that included a powerful new brand message that encapsulates, in a few words, the RHS mission: “Inspiring everyone to grow.”

Cathy Snow, Licensing Manager, RHS, says: “Even a brand that has been a household name for over 200 years can’t afford to rest on its laurels. We are always looking for ways to enhance our brand offering, and the trend towards geometric design has been an unmissable opportunity to reveal the riches that, uniquely, gardening history can offer. I am sure the RHS Licensing Geometric Style Guide 2018 will be enormously popular with both existing and new licensees.”