Sean A. Pritchard is a natural wonder. The 39-year-old (he’s 40 in September 2026) only started gardening in earnest in 2018, when he and his partner Dan bought a cottage in rural Somerset, but since then he’s gained a huge following on Instagram, designed show gardens for RHS Hampton Court and Chelsea, and written Outside In, which garnered rave reviews from India Knight and Richard E. Grant.
His second book, Atmosfloric, is if anything even more eye-catching. Packed with Sean’s vibrant, beautifully composed photographs, it may at first glance look like just another pretty coffee-table tome, but in fact it’s bursting with ideas, inspiration and practical advice. After a disquisition on the emotional power of floral hues and an in-depth exploration of colour wheels and theory, Sean divides the main bulk of the book into three ‘atmospheres’: romantic, energetic and reflective.
Each of these, in turn, is illustrated by four different gardens or interiors. Some of them are famous, like Charleston in Sussex or Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. Others are private but have been featured in various magazines, such as those created by Isabel and Julian Bannerman in Somerset (WoI July 2025) or Richard E. Grant in west London, plus a few that are less well-known but no less delightful, like French designer Marin Montagut’s cottage in Normandy or garden designer Butter Wakefield’s home in Shepherd’s Bush.
These profiles showcase Sean’s twin skills as a photographer and a writer, but they also demonstrate his talent for friendship and making creative connections. Talking to him over tea in Bloomsbury, he explains how he came to include the hip Provençal basket-makers Atelier Vime: by dropping them a line on Instagram when he and Dan were holidaying nearby. Having over 160,000 followers must be a great ice-breaker.
Each section also includes really practical plant lists arranged by colour, a sample planting plan and some suggestions for related cut-flower arrangements, so you really get a lot for your money. Sean has clearly given flower colours deep thought, and he brings them to life with some delightful turns of phrase: ‘The intrigue of purple,’ he writes, ‘comes from its blended parentage – part red, part blue. It is halfway between two colours that offer disparate moods: where red is passionate, aggressive and assertive, blue is calming, trustworthy and recuperative. This suspends purple in a state of ambiguity: to which family does it belong?’
Born and brought up near Altrincham in Cheshire, Sean didn’t, in fact, have green-fingered parents: ‘With four boys you can imagine our garden was more like a football pitch.’ But his grandfather was a groundsman and had a big garden of his own, where he grew both flowers and veg, and cordoned off a corner for a young Sean to tend.
Sale Grammar School led to a business and finance degree at Manchester University, which took Sean to London for his first job on a graduate trainee scheme. ‘I loved London from the start,’ he recalls, ‘but I didn’t have any friends when I first moved down’; he cheered himself up by visiting gardens – Fenton House in Hampstead remains a firm favourite – and buying flowers from New Covent Garden Market and Columbia Road.
Jobs in branding and central strategy for Debenhams and Time Inc followed (it transpires that we worked in the same office for a while), but when, in his early thirties, Sean was offered voluntary redundancy, he jumped at the chance. With Dan’s support he made a complete career change, signing up at the Garden Design School in Bristol, where he thrived; while still a student he was commissioned to create a show garden for Macmillan Cancer Support at the Harrogate Flower Show. He’s since designed them for RHS Hampton Court and, in 2025, the ODD Pavilion at RHS Chelsea, but he still prefers working as a one-man band, taking on freelance collaborators when bigger projects come along.
Atmosfloric looks set to widen his fanbase still further – and in case you’re wondering about its title: ‘I was searching for a succinct way to express how garden and flower colour impacts mood, and wanted to capture the playfulness that runs through the book,’ Sean explains, ‘so I started playing around with combinations of words, and Atmosfloric was born from that.’ So now you know.
