In their choice of subject matter and technique, Belleroche’s landscapes reveal the strong influence of the Impressionists. The daring compositional devices, as well as the striking economy and sparseness of his views, may also betray a debt to advances in contemporary photography – in addition to a knowledge of Ukiyo-e printmaking – which was enjoying widespread popularity and distribution throughout Paris due to the endeavours of Tadamasa Hayashi.

This study shows the garden at The Elms, the house between Ashford and Wye in which Evelyn and Roger Folley lived from 1950-57. It’s under snow, which probably dates it to the winter of 1956-7. Evelyn very rarely used crayon but may have used it here for ease and because of the obvious disadvantages of using watercolour in freezing temperatures. The upright stakes on the left are those used by Roger to grow loganberries. The shed is the last of a row of brick garden sheds used to store garden tools and the skis which they occasionally used in snowy weather on the slopes in the field opposite the front of the house.

Mahoney was particularly fond of giant sunflowers and made many colour and black and white studies of this species, capturing their rough stems and large flower heads, and the ragged angles of their great leaves. He sometimes drew them in Edward Bawden’s garden at Great Bardfield from a ladder.

Finney trained initially at Bromley School of Art where he attended evening classes from 1915, and then at Beckenham School of Art where he won a trade scholarship in 1918. He studied painting with Amy Katherine Browning and etching with Eric Gill. Around 1927 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where he studied under William Rothenstein. When his Chiswick studio was damaged in the Blitz, Finney was granted leave from the Civil Defense because of ill health, and transferred all of his belongings to Wokingham.

Gilbert Spencer was born at Cookham, Berkshire a year after his brother and fellow artist Stanley. He studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, woodcarving at the Royal College of Art, 1911-12, then with Fred Brown and Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1913-20. Both Gilbert and his brother Stanley served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Gilbert was then drafted to the Macedonian front, serving in Salonika and in the Eastern Mediterranean 1915–19. Spencer made his name as a landscape artist working mainly in the English southern counties. At various times he taught at the Royal College of Art, Glasgow School of Art and Camberwell, serving meanwhile as an Official War Artist, 1940-3.

Finney studied under Eric Gill before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s. Equally versatile when working on canvas or paper, his compositions are characterised by a distinctive use of colour and design, similar in many ways to that of Eric Ravilious with whom he attended the RCA.

During the First Word War Horton became a conscientious objector and was sentenced to two years hard labour in prison. After the war, he returned to his art studies attending the Central School of Art 1918-20 and the Royal College of Art 1922-24. It was at this time he first experienced the work of Paul Cézanne at the ‘Modern French Painting’ exhibition held at the Mansard Gallery, London, 1919. Cézanne had a profound influence upon Horton's work, particularly in the landscapes he produced during the 1920s.

For drawing, Mahoney liked a textured paper, soft to the touch, such as Ingres, or still better, hand-made papers from firms such as Hayle Mill or Barcham Green. Occasionally he bought cheap sketchbooks from Woolworth’s because he found the paper so sympathetic as a surface for drawing. He often used charcoal, adding white or red crayons to highlight drawings. Here he has used charcoal to complete the underdrawing and built up layers of colour in watercolour.

In the introduction to 'Gardener's Choice', 1936 Charles Mahoney & Evelyn Dunbar wrote about the joy of painting plants: 'In addition to our natural pleasure in beautiful plants and our experience in raising and cultivating them, we have gained a close intimacy through drawing and painting them. We have observed them as artists as well as gardeners, and have necessarily been made aware not only of the garden value of a plant and the intrinsic beauty of its flower, but of proportions, forms and contrasts, of the subtle relations of the leaf to the bloom, or the plant to its neighbour.'

Mahoney’s unbridled enthusiasm for plants extended to include the objects and implements found in gardens - watering cans, greenhouses and wheelbarrows. His passion for gardening was shared with many of his contemporaries and this painting brings to mind Eric Ravilious’ depictions of greenhouses from the 1930s.

Florence Dunbar (Evelyn’s mother) and her sister Clara Cowling, both originally from Bradford, painted with the energy of the enthusiastic amateur. The attribution of this portrait of Dunbar, relaxing in a pink dress under a parasol in the garden at The Cedars (the family home in Strood), is authenticated by a photograph in the Dunbar family album of Clara Cowling painting it. The photograph also shows Paul, the Dunbars’ dog, trying to jump up on to Evelyn’s lap.

Douglas Stannus Gray lived for most of his life at 102 King's Avenue, Clapham, and utilised the garden there in many of his portraits. He is believed to have been a favourite pupil of John Singer Sargent at the Royal Academy, and this self-portrait shows the loose, spontaneous style that Sargent favoured. By 1950, the house in Clapham, badly damaged during the Second World War, was under a compulsory purchase order for demolition and development of blocks of flats. Stannus Gray died nine years later, and his obituary in The Times praised his skill and stature as a portraitist.

Mary Adshead studied at the Slade under Henry Tonks. She became a prominent muralist creating decorations for both public and private spaces. She also illustrated a number of children’s books. As a noteworthy female artist, she exhibited frequently at the Women’s International Art Club. Working at a time when expectations of women were still largely confined to issues of domesticity, her prodigious professional output was noteworthy.

Residing in Suffolk, at Potash Farm, Evans was largely self-sufficient growing his own vegetables and flowers which were often the subject of his paintings. His highly distinctive watercolours owe much to those of Edward Burra whom he greatly admired. In this fluid and loose watercolour Evans captures the delicacy of a group of wild poppies. The size and technical brilliance of Evans’ watercolours were qualities frequently commented on by critics and his contemporaries.

In 1922 Bliss was awarded an MA in English Literature by the University of Edinburgh. He then studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London and in his post-graduate year he studied engraving and this stylised watercolour owes much to the art of engraving. Bliss captures an idealised view of a family walking in the countryside in spring, depicting sheep with their lambs, and children climbing trees and picking flowers.

John Nash was a keen plantsman. A passion he shared with fellow artists Charles Mahoney, Edward Bawden, Geoffrey Rhoades, and Evelyn Dunbar. This group regularly swapped cuttings with each other by post and assisted each other with the cultivation of rare and unusual plants.

Paterson worked in oil, pastel, watercoulour, lithography and etching, but gained her reputation through her colour woodcuts which she made using a technique which she called "woodtype". A line drawing would be etched onto a soft wood block to create isolated sections, each of which would be individually coloured with watercolour and printed off onto a sheet of paper attached to the top of the block with drawing pins. The result was a complex, multi-coloured image produced from a single block. Most coloured woodcuts are produced using several blocks, generally one block per colour.

As well as taking inspiration from the plants in his garden Mahoney often made studies of objects and implements found in gardens. Here he has taken great care to capture the curved and angular forms of an upturned wheelbarrow and garden trug. Working in pen and ink he produces a delicate study of light and shade.

Muriel Pemberton is revered for starting and developing formal studies in fashion in Britain, eventually becoming the head of the first Faculty of Fashion and Design at St Martin’s School of Art. She brought the freedom of a painter to the discipline of designing and making clothes, and throughout her career she pursued in tandem her two great talents for painting and design.

Mahoney made repeated studies of plants in his garden. He bought the best quality materials, often from Lechertier Barbe, in Jermyn Street. He prepared boards and canvases for painting with much care, using special recipes. In his own words: “The practical lesson to be learned is that ground and underpainting always have some effect on the final painting, even when it is not apparent, and that pictures must be carefully built up with this point in mind.”

Mahoney’s interest in formal gardens and plants such as auriculas and old roses – all deeply unfashionable at the time – is typical of the originality and independence of his vision. In this study he captures the rose from first bud to full bloom, paying attention to the rich foliage and plant structure.

Although Mahoney worked independently from mainstream movements, he remained interested in, and open-minded about the contemporary scene. He was especially interested in Surrealism, elements of which are reflected in this painting The landscape in the background is likely to be a view of the Willow Grove at Great Bardfield, also painted by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden.

Having made trips to Gisors in Normandy in 1936, 1938 and 1939 his works of the late 1930s and early 1940s are infused with French influences. This landscape dates from this period of Rowntree's career, characterised as it is by flat plains, a formalised composition, and bold application of paint.

Rowntree first met Eric Ravilious when he enrolled as a student at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, where the latter was teaching part-time. Their friendship prompted the Rowntrees to settle in Great Bardfield at the beginning of the Second World War and it was memories of Great Bardfield that inspired the School Print, Tractor and Landscape, which proved to be one of the most popular exhibits in the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibitions at the V&A in 1946.

Carolyn Sergeant studied at Wimbledon School of Art (1955-59) and at the Royal Academy Schools (1959-62) where she was a Silver Medallist. At the Royal Academy Schools she met and later married her fellow student, John Sergeant. Working separately, but taking inspiration from one another, they proved to be a formidable artistic couple.

The Muses were a favourite theme of Charles Mahoney's. He first employed them in his mural at Morley College in 1928, and appears to have returned to this theme in the late 1950's when he was asked to submit, once again, designs for Morley College which was rebuilt after its destruction in the Second World War. For Mahoney, the Muses represented the spiritual and creative values that he strove to express both in his life and work. By the time Mahoney embarked on this last large scale work he must have known that, with his physical health failing, he was unlikely to complete it. The studies however bear testament to the remarkable clarity of vision which never surrendered to physical decline.

Acquired in 1937, Oak Cottage, in Wrotham, Kent, was very much Mahoney’s spiritual as well as actual home. It was also a home for his mother, Bessie, after she left Anerley in 1937. Charles lived at Oak Cottage from 1937-40, during which period he renovated it, and again from 1945 until his death in 1968. Once the garden that he planted had matured, he seldom worked anywhere else. For Mahoney, Oak Cottage had something of the quality with which Stanley Spencer imbued his childhood home, Fernlea; in both cases the frequent pictorial references to elements of the architecture and garden gives the location an almost mystical quality.

Edward Bawden and fellow artists Charles Mahoney, Barnett Freedman and Percy Horton who had studied at the Royal College of art swapped plant cuttings in their letters. When Bawden moved to Great Bardfield Mahoney and Geoffrey Rhoades dug out a garden.