Stoepplantjes

Stoepplantjes (Wild plants)
Author: Hanneke Jelles
Illustrator: Nathalie Tirion
Original language: Dutch
Translated into English: not
Published: 2020
Publisher: Hortus in-house
ISBN13: none
Price: € 7.50 (soft cover)
Age: from 4 years and up
Only available at:
The Hortus Botanicus Leiden
other Botanical Gardens

On a visit to the Trompenburg Gardens and Arboretum we came across this super fun activity book Stoepplantjes (Pavement Plants). The book is part of a project of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and is self-published by the University. So it's a unique book.

The book is a search for pavement plants (also known by the unsympathetic name of weeds), but at the same time it is so much more! It is a colouring book for young and old with the most beautiful images of plants and flowers that you come across everywhere and that you may find very just ordinary. But if you look closely you will see that they are not as ordinary as you assumed.

There are 52 Pavement plants to be found in this book, one for each week and all beautifully and detailed drawn by Nathalie Tirion. It is a pleasure to do our best to colour her drawings as beautiful too. Hanneke Jelles wrote the texts in the book, the mini-monsters (and we) learn a lot from them.

The attractive cover is made by Joris Schmidt, he makes all the beautiful posters and more for the Hortus. We all love his work. The photo about pavement chalking was made by Simone Both. What a wonderful fun book and project this is, we are very happy with it!

The book encourages you to search for a pavement plant every week and if there are more than one plant together you can pick one. Take the plant home and have a good look at it, then you can colour the corresponding drawing very precisely. If you like, you can take a picture of the plant or dry it, then you can keep it for a very long time. This way you create your own collection of pavement plants, for which you first went on a journey of discovery.