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Understorey: A Year Among Weeds
A beautiful and highly original artist's diary of a year spent observing wild plants
Weeds are our most ubiquitous and accessible plants. Whether in private gardens, roadside verges or clustered around municipal lampposts, they offer a year-round spectacle of wildlife. The benefits to us of being among greenery are well known, but what exactly are these vaguely familiar shapes that accompany our every step outside, yet pass beneath our notice? How and when do they emerge, bloom and subside, and what would it mean to notice them?
In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at wild plants. Meditating too on how they appear in other artists’ work, from a bramble framing a sixth-century Byzantine manuscript to a kudzu vine installation in modern Berlin, she explores the art of paying attention even to the smallest things.
PRAISE FOR UNDERSTOREY
'A beautiful, quiet, achingly tender book. A year spent with weeds; giving voice to the exquisite and the everyday alike... It’s a reminder that the circle always turns; the light always comes back' Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places
‘A year of sketching and musing on the unplanted, unplanned, unremarkable greenery that surrounds us all every day. A celebration of disorder and doing nothing – the perfect antidote to the modern belief that something only exists once it’s been captured by your phone' Ken Thompson, author of Common or Garden
'A delicately written study of the joys and difficulties of paying attention' Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House
'Anna Chapman Parker weaves together art history, botany, ecosystems, and the routines of everyday life in this gracefully illuminating account of a year drawing weeds. Through the shifting seasons, Chapman Parker’s drawings and prose reveal the extraordinary value of plants that are generally taken for granted, ignored, or obliterated, and the power of stopping to look carefully, pen in hand' Alixe Bovey, Dean and Deputy Director at The Courtauld
'What a brilliant idea, to fit into the interstices of days full of work and two children, the very plants that are themselves so good at filling the interstices of our daily lives. The attention that Anna Chapman Parker has given to the ordinary weeds surrounding her, both in drawings and words, gives them a heightened glamour, presence and worth' Ruth Pavey, author of A Wood of One's Own
Weeds are our most ubiquitous and accessible plants. Whether in private gardens, roadside verges or clustered around municipal lampposts, they offer a year-round spectacle of wildlife. The benefits to us of being among greenery are well known, but what exactly are these vaguely familiar shapes that accompany our every step outside, yet pass beneath our notice? How and when do they emerge, bloom and subside, and what would it mean to notice them?
In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at wild plants. Meditating too on how they appear in other artists’ work, from a bramble framing a sixth-century Byzantine manuscript to a kudzu vine installation in modern Berlin, she explores the art of paying attention even to the smallest things.
PRAISE FOR UNDERSTOREY
'A beautiful, quiet, achingly tender book. A year spent with weeds; giving voice to the exquisite and the everyday alike... It’s a reminder that the circle always turns; the light always comes back' Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places
‘A year of sketching and musing on the unplanted, unplanned, unremarkable greenery that surrounds us all every day. A celebration of disorder and doing nothing – the perfect antidote to the modern belief that something only exists once it’s been captured by your phone' Ken Thompson, author of Common or Garden
'A delicately written study of the joys and difficulties of paying attention' Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House
'Anna Chapman Parker weaves together art history, botany, ecosystems, and the routines of everyday life in this gracefully illuminating account of a year drawing weeds. Through the shifting seasons, Chapman Parker’s drawings and prose reveal the extraordinary value of plants that are generally taken for granted, ignored, or obliterated, and the power of stopping to look carefully, pen in hand' Alixe Bovey, Dean and Deputy Director at The Courtauld
'What a brilliant idea, to fit into the interstices of days full of work and two children, the very plants that are themselves so good at filling the interstices of our daily lives. The attention that Anna Chapman Parker has given to the ordinary weeds surrounding her, both in drawings and words, gives them a heightened glamour, presence and worth' Ruth Pavey, author of A Wood of One's Own
- GenresNonfictionNature
386 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 6, 2024
10 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 21, 2025
This book was such a surprise. Much like the weeds in Anna Chapman Parker’s life, I initially wondered if I might grow bored with this book, but I found the beauty of, in Perec’s words, ‘what happens when nothing happens’. This book spoke to me as an artist, writer, and a person who loves taking long walks in this surprising world.
May 13, 2024
Author-artist Anna Chapman Parker has written a gorgeous book on her experience of observing wild plants for a year in Northern England. Her illustrations, quietly powerful, capture life in a moment and as she observes, we do too, slowing life down to a heartbeat. Will purchase this for my personal library and give it to friends who have embraced slow living. A gem!
July 1, 2024
I loved this book so much. I read it fast and then I read it slow. I made notes on my phone about it as I read it. A year's journey through one woman's attempts to carve out time and creative space for herself in her day to day life, by drawing the common weeds she finds on her domestic round. This is quietly brilliant and subversive. It does its simple thing, and as you read, you find yourself thinking about the value of not just weeds but objects in general and then people in specific. It teaches you to slow down, make space for yourself and to really start to look at what is in front of you and how you might want or need to see it differently. I love the thoughts about how to translate what the eye sees into what the hand draws and the constant renegotiating that has to be accommodated between the two. I love the thoughts on artistic practice and how important they are as a connector to our lived experience and I really enjoyed the inclusion of other works and artistic practice that have influenced and inspired the author. This is one of my books of 2024.
October 8, 2025
reading this book brought me so much joy. the author does such an amazing job weaving together herself, her research and her artwork. the writing, the prose and the drawings are achingly beautiful. as someone who is struggling with actually drawing, this book quietly and intensely encouraged me. soooo raw, so poetic and so real. it listened to me as i read it, and i have started to consider weeds with much love now haha. this book has everything a good book has: theory, heart and a lasting impression.
August 2, 2024
A glorious celebration of weeds - the plants we overlook, take for granted or view as pests. There’s beauty and delight on these pages. From the author’s stunning ink drawings to her magical words. We follow a year in her life as she learns more about and becomes more devoted to the weeds that grow near her home.
This book will carry you out onto the streets where you live, and further afield, constantly looking at the ground. You’ll be delighted when you recognise a plant from one of her drawings. Or when you just stop to look and wonder at the resilience and beauty of these plants that do so much good.
This book will carry you out onto the streets where you live, and further afield, constantly looking at the ground. You’ll be delighted when you recognise a plant from one of her drawings. Or when you just stop to look and wonder at the resilience and beauty of these plants that do so much good.
June 14, 2024
Understorey: A Year Among Weeds is Anna Chapman Parker’s narration of a calendar year, during which she observed and recorded weeds she saw. We all see weeds, every day. They are in gardens; they are in cracks in pavements, roads and walls. We see them, but I, for one, don’t register what I’m seeing. Chapman takes the time to really look at what’s there: the different species; their precise colour; their state of health (young and fresh; old and damaged); and whether they have appeared or changed since she last passed this way.
There are two aspects to the book: the author’s sketches and her text. Parker admits that her drawings are her attempt to capture the experience of seeing that weed in that place at that moment. I hope that they fulfil that purpose for her because I think it’s fair to say that no-one will buy the book for the drawings. I’m afraid that, in some cases, I couldn’t even tell that they represented plants, never mind what type of plant. Parker is quite open about that, stating “I’m not interested in its purporting to be anything but drawing.” And “The result may appear less accurately as cleavers, but might feel closer to being there, looking at them.” No, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t.
The text is infinitely more polished than the sketches and I confess that I had to consult a dictionary many times. I had never heard of “aleatoric”, for example. The text will be manna to those who embrace the “slow living” philosophy: it takes the format of diary entries (not daily – maybe ten a month) and the entries range from a couple of lines to a couple of pages. An entry may be descriptive, e.g. 21 February’s “First daisies in flower: white blots in the grass beside the carpark, more visible because they’re still closed up. It’s 8am; what time does the daisy call it day?”; or a reflective discursion upon trying to capture the nature of the three-dimensional plant on two-dimensional paper. There are also passages discussing the appearance of plants in paintings such as those in the National Gallery.
I have mixed views upon this book. I found the calm meditative nature of the prose and Parker’s eloquent and erudite essays upon a few minutes’ activity to be quite soothing and I was pleasantly surprised that my complete ignorance of plants and their technical descriptions (apparently nettles have “a cordite base and an acuminate tip”) didn’t matter at all. This is not a book to buy because you love gardening; it’s a book to buy because you love language. A council path’s edges “grow threadbare like patches of worn clothing rubbed thin by the body’s friction.” Some sentences are not grammatically correct but convey a moment beautifully, such as 2nd October’s “Rooks cawing, faint cries of children on the swings; a light breeze. Sharp tang of a bonfire from the allotments over the hill.” However, “Or letting the song lyric or conversation running through my head leak out of the pen?” was obscure: was Parker simply wondering if she should scribble down some unassociated words alongside the sketch? And “An X is both specificity and denial: it cancels itself out” strikes me as pretentious.
Overall, a good book – one to be dipped into and savoured, not quaffed in one go.
#Understorey #NetGalley
There are two aspects to the book: the author’s sketches and her text. Parker admits that her drawings are her attempt to capture the experience of seeing that weed in that place at that moment. I hope that they fulfil that purpose for her because I think it’s fair to say that no-one will buy the book for the drawings. I’m afraid that, in some cases, I couldn’t even tell that they represented plants, never mind what type of plant. Parker is quite open about that, stating “I’m not interested in its purporting to be anything but drawing.” And “The result may appear less accurately as cleavers, but might feel closer to being there, looking at them.” No, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t.
The text is infinitely more polished than the sketches and I confess that I had to consult a dictionary many times. I had never heard of “aleatoric”, for example. The text will be manna to those who embrace the “slow living” philosophy: it takes the format of diary entries (not daily – maybe ten a month) and the entries range from a couple of lines to a couple of pages. An entry may be descriptive, e.g. 21 February’s “First daisies in flower: white blots in the grass beside the carpark, more visible because they’re still closed up. It’s 8am; what time does the daisy call it day?”; or a reflective discursion upon trying to capture the nature of the three-dimensional plant on two-dimensional paper. There are also passages discussing the appearance of plants in paintings such as those in the National Gallery.
I have mixed views upon this book. I found the calm meditative nature of the prose and Parker’s eloquent and erudite essays upon a few minutes’ activity to be quite soothing and I was pleasantly surprised that my complete ignorance of plants and their technical descriptions (apparently nettles have “a cordite base and an acuminate tip”) didn’t matter at all. This is not a book to buy because you love gardening; it’s a book to buy because you love language. A council path’s edges “grow threadbare like patches of worn clothing rubbed thin by the body’s friction.” Some sentences are not grammatically correct but convey a moment beautifully, such as 2nd October’s “Rooks cawing, faint cries of children on the swings; a light breeze. Sharp tang of a bonfire from the allotments over the hill.” However, “Or letting the song lyric or conversation running through my head leak out of the pen?” was obscure: was Parker simply wondering if she should scribble down some unassociated words alongside the sketch? And “An X is both specificity and denial: it cancels itself out” strikes me as pretentious.
Overall, a good book – one to be dipped into and savoured, not quaffed in one go.
#Understorey #NetGalley
February 10, 2026
This book is the result of an art project where the author spent a year drawing the weeds she came across in her home town.
But the book is about so much more than weeds - a word she recognises as a poor descriptor. It is as much about the art of drawing and perhaps more than anything, about being present in the moment.
She explores the depiction of 'weeds' by other artists across the centuries. She examines what it means to truly observe what is in front of you and how a drawing represents not merely a recording of a thing rendered in two dimensions but also the moment of relationship between that thing - here a weed - and the artist themself.
I would wager that it is impossible, having read this book, not to walk down a street and find yourself looking at the cracks in the paving stones, and the plants pushing their way out from where the wall meets the ground, wondering what each curl of leaf signifies. Who are these overlooked vegetal companions? Suddenly we become aware of the existence of life all around us. You see the trees, hear the birds, smell the decay of the woods and notice the unwinding cycles of life.
The word 'weed' invites negative connotations - an ugly invasive plant that is in the way, something to be destroyed and cleared away. This book invites the reader to look again at the complexity of these warriors of the plant world. They are resilient, adaptable, resourceful, beautiful, indicative of a healthful environment. They are ubiquitous and are a constant reminder that humans are just one form of life on this planet and, by some standards at least, not the dominant form we like to imagine ourselves to be. Weeds have survived throughout the aeons and when we are long gone will undoubtedly be finding and filling the space we have abandoned, colonising and healing the lands that we have ravaged.
But the book is about so much more than weeds - a word she recognises as a poor descriptor. It is as much about the art of drawing and perhaps more than anything, about being present in the moment.
She explores the depiction of 'weeds' by other artists across the centuries. She examines what it means to truly observe what is in front of you and how a drawing represents not merely a recording of a thing rendered in two dimensions but also the moment of relationship between that thing - here a weed - and the artist themself.
I would wager that it is impossible, having read this book, not to walk down a street and find yourself looking at the cracks in the paving stones, and the plants pushing their way out from where the wall meets the ground, wondering what each curl of leaf signifies. Who are these overlooked vegetal companions? Suddenly we become aware of the existence of life all around us. You see the trees, hear the birds, smell the decay of the woods and notice the unwinding cycles of life.
The word 'weed' invites negative connotations - an ugly invasive plant that is in the way, something to be destroyed and cleared away. This book invites the reader to look again at the complexity of these warriors of the plant world. They are resilient, adaptable, resourceful, beautiful, indicative of a healthful environment. They are ubiquitous and are a constant reminder that humans are just one form of life on this planet and, by some standards at least, not the dominant form we like to imagine ourselves to be. Weeds have survived throughout the aeons and when we are long gone will undoubtedly be finding and filling the space we have abandoned, colonising and healing the lands that we have ravaged.
gave-up
November 23, 2024No stars bc didn’t finish. The prose is just a little too thick for my brain to latch on to right now. Weird concussion symptoms are coming back and my brain really just wants to fall off of this book sadly. Maybe some other time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
November 4, 2024
a phenomenal achievement. a new all time favourite. i already can't wait to reread, re-annotate and reanalyse. excellent - i only wish i read it sooner, whilst doing my masters.
January 28, 2025
“To see something is to forget its name.”
August 10, 2024
Anna’s book made me stop and think a lot, about plants, art & even life. I loved the mix of art history, nature writing, and memoir. A truly special book.
January 29, 2026
I started this at the beginning of 2025 and finished it a year later, following along with the author’s illustrated journal about … well, weeds. “What were these plants that accompany every walk outside, yet pass beneath our notice? When and how did they emerge, flower, subside and disappear through the course of a year? And what constituted a weed anyway?” In search of answers, she drew and wrote about whatever plants she found “along weed-lined pavements, carpark edges, parks, footpaths and roadside verges” near her home – and encouraged me to look at “weeds” in a whole new way. I learned the names of the ones that pop up in my garden and that I began to notice every time I went on a walk. (Thank you, Seek app!) They are everywhere, so stalwart and persistent, so creative about finding a place to grow.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews