This year’s Brand Licensing Europe has seen the launch of the latest Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) style guide, a guide that celebrates one of the most important figures in the history of horticulture.

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) is admired both for her botanical art and for her groundbreaking garden designs. She designed over 400 gardens in the UK and Europe and three in the US. Many still exist and are visited and admired to this day.

In 1897Jekyll was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the highest accolade the RHS gives to British horticulturists. She and horticulturist Ellen Willmott were the first women ever to receive this prestigious award.

In fact, Gertrude Jekyll sketches have already been the basis for a number of product designs including RHS handbags, kitchen textiles, washable mats and upholstery fabrics. They have been sourced from the RHS Lindley Library in central London, which contains world-renowned collections of rare and modern books about horticulture, the archives of the RHS and the botanical art and photography that makes up the RHS Lindley Collections, the world’s finest library of botanic art.

The RHS Lindley Collections contains over 30,000 illustrations, some dating back to the 1600s, alongside hundreds of thousands of photographs including plant portraits, garden views and images from RHS shows and events. It has been a valuable design resource for the RHS, and the basis for over a dozen style guides to date, guides that highlight artists and garden design styles, and are humorous, child-focused, traditional, modern and much more.

Now Gertrude Jekyll’s name is about to grace its very own dedicated style guide. Gertrude Jekyll’s notebooks, watercolours, and other materials, highlighting her artistic talent and design process, have become the basis for this guide, developed with the help of Sasha Reid, a respected pattern designer and founder of design agency Fuchsia and Fig.

Sasha Reid has transformed delicate sketches into larger, more intricate patterns that reimagine Jekyll's vision through a contemporary lens. Sketches have been completed and made into repeat patterns perfect for textiles, wallpaper, flooring and giftables.

The result, the very first RHS Licensing Gertrude Jekyll Style Guide, is a triumphant addition to the support package that the RHS offers to aid product and packaging design by its licensees.

RHS style guides are all different, but all have one thing very much in common: RHS licensees are invited to use the assets as they appear in the guides or to adapt them to create their own unique designs. It’s all part of the RHS commitment to the constant development and improvement of its service to its licensees, of which the Gertrude Jekyll Style Guide is the latest impressive example.

Cathy Snow, RHS Licensing Manager, says: “Design support is a fundamental aim of the RHS licensing programme andstandalone guides based on specific elements of the RHS Lindley Collections have proved popular with our licensees. The wonderful new RHS Licensing Gertrude Jekyll Style Guide, with invaluable development work from Sasha Reid, is a marvellous addition to this unmatched selection of uniquely appealing design resources.”