Both by Douglas Crase

Both by Douglas Crase
This book came out in 2004, and the subtitle is A Portrait in Two Parts.

In this book, we learn about a fascinating fifty-year relationship between Dwight Ripley (the heir to an American railroad fortune and a polymath who excelled in horticulture, music, language, and painting) and Rupert Barneby (the son of an aristocratic English family and one of the greatest botanists of the 20th Century).

After meeting at Harrow, an exclusive boarding school in England, Dwight and Rupert discovered a shared obsession for botany and love for each other. Ultimately, the two would go on many botanizing trips before settling in Los Angeles in the 1930s. In addition to regular botanizing trips in the American Southwest, Dwight and Rupert were part of a lively social circle among the artistic élite of New York that included W. H. Auden, Peggy Guggenheim, and Jackson Pollock.

This book features the incredible life stories of Dwight and Rupert, and gardeners will thrill to learn more about their botanical mania and exploits through their “exquisite prose on plants, snatches of Barneby's witty poetry, and reproductions of drawings in each of their distinctive styles.”

This book is 320 pages of the extraordinary lives of two immensely talented men and their impact on botany, horticulture, and American art in the 20th Century.

You can get a copy of Both by Douglas Crase and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show Notes for around $3