Marian McEvoy’s Botanical Art Arrives at the Wildflower Center, Supporting Conservation Efforts

Austin’s botanical garden, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, has partnered with celebrated editor and artist Marian McEvoy to launch an exclusive collection of limited-edition pressed flower prints, now available in the center’s gift shop. The collaboration, developed with New York design boutique KRB, supports the Wildflower Center’s horticulture and conservation efforts.

Previously available only in New York and Milan, McEvoy’s intricate botanical collages are now accessible to Austin audiences. The collection features three hand-signed prints: one with a blend of daffodils, goldenrod and wild yellow indigo on a white background; another showcasing Mongolian bluebeard and petunias with English walnut leaves on yellow; and a third featuring spirea, primroses, fiddlehead ferns and rose leaves on blue. Each is priced at $475.

The partnership aligns with the Wildflower Center’s recently expanded retail mission. “We decided to devote some square footage to a new gallery space, where we partnered with artists to produce prints and multiples that focus on botanicals, natives, and the natural world in general,” said Scott Simons, the center’s director of marketing and communications. “Focusing on prints keeps prices accessible to our guests and allows us to work with fantastic artists that otherwise might not be able to show with us due to other gallery commitments.”

A life in color

McEvoy, inducted into Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, is best known for her prolific career in fashion journalism and interior design publishing. She served as the European correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily and W in the 1970s before becoming the founding editor-in-chief of Elle Décor and later editor-in-chief of House Beautiful. Now based in the Hudson Valley, she has transitioned her focus to crafting works like her botanical art, using pressed flowers and leaves to create graphic, high-contrast compositions.

The latest chapter in her career is a natural evolution of a lifetime spent immersed in aesthetics. She credits fashion legend Yves Saint Laurent with shaping her understanding of color and composition. “His sense of color and composition was amazing and natural,” she says. “It wasn’t forced. It just came out of him, like talking. I watched him very closely for years, and I think I learned a lot.”

After a life spent traveling between fashion capitals, she now embraces the quiet satisfaction of her creative work. “I work alone and want to work alone,” she says. “It’s very much like meditation. There’s a rhythm that I find incredibly satisfying and very soothing.”

A creative process rooted in nature

Though McEvoy admits she isn’t much of a gardener, she credits her artistic evolution to a lifelong fascination with plant life. “I became fascinated by the look of them,” she says of flowers and vines. “Gardening helped in my decision to be so botanically oriented, but I’m a terrible gardener. It needs patience. I’ve got patience for my work, but put me out in a flower bed to weed for three hours, and I am not very happy.”

Her home, filled with bold reds, corals, blacks and whites, is a reflection of her personal style. “Every time I sit down and look around, it makes me really happy,” she says. “That’s called a home.”

Now, through this partnership, a piece of McEvoy’s world will find its way into Austin homes as well. The exclusive prints, available in the Wildflower Center’s shop and gallery, will not only bring beauty to collectors but also support the center’s horticulture and conservation efforts.

For McEvoy, art is meant to be lived with. “It’s all very important that these things end up in a home,” she says. “I don’t want to work in some kind of closed-up vacuum. Don’t we all like it when people like what we do?”

With this latest collaboration, there’s no doubt that many will.

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