Long before botanical prints hung in smart drawing rooms, there was the herbarium: the centuries-old practice of pressing, drying and mounting real plants, each one carefully labelled and preserved for study.
It was serious science, the way the great naturalists made sense of the living world, and yet the results were unexpectedly beautiful. A single specimen laid out on cream paper with its handwritten name beneath, half record and half work of art. By the nineteenth century botanising had become a genteel craze, and pressed flower albums filled the homes of enthusiastic amateurs.
"The herbarium was serious science, and yet the results were unexpectedly, quietly beautiful."
The Charm of the Well-Worn Specimen
What gives the look its particular magic is the patina of age. These are not crisp modern botanicals but designs with a faded, vintage quality, the soft colours and the aged ground of a specimen sheet that has been treasured for a hundred years.
It is also a look that comes in whatever temperature a room wants. Pershore Postcards in Linen, from SS26 by Laura Ashley, paints its flowers in full colour at £41.60 a roll. Green Flora and Blue Flora, both from Herbarium by Sandberg, take the same idea into a single green or a cool blue. And Botanica in Oat, from Trädgården, packs the specimens closer, so the wall reads almost as a texture from the far side of a room.
Pershore Postcards, Linen by Laura Ashley
Green Flora by Sandberg
Blue Flora by Sandberg
Botanica, Oat by Sandberg
"It feels collected rather than bought, the walls of a curious, well-travelled naturalist."
How and Where to Use It
A herbarium design brings character and a sense of story to the rooms you want to feel personal. It is wonderful in a study or a home office, where its scholarly air is entirely at home, lovely in a garden room or a bathroom where the botanical theme sings, and quietly restful in a bedroom. A downstairs cloakroom papered in scattered specimens is a guaranteed delight.
The scale is yours to choose. Botanical Drawing, from Random Papers by Coordonné, abandons the grid altogether for one enormous specimen study on aged paper, sold as a fixed panel. Botanica in Graphite goes the other way, a pencil drawing in place of a painting, which is the quietest version of the look there is.
Botanical Drawing by Coordonné
Botanica, Graphite by Sandberg
It pairs beautifully with antique and collected furniture, a few real botanical prints, and anything with a bit of honest age. The Sandberg designs here are murals sold by the square metre rather than by the roll, so they cost what your wall costs. Browse the whole Botanical Postcard collection, or botanical and vintage for the looks either side of it, and order a sample first to see those faded colours truly in your own light.
The naturalists pressed their flowers to keep a little of summer for ever. Herbarium wallpaper does much the same for a room, preserving the quiet beauty of the garden on the wall, all year round.
