The Flower Whisperer

Academy Award, Tony Award, and Golden Globe Award winning performer, Joel Grey's early passion for flowers and plants helped form a life-long love for nature's beauty. From the tender age of just 10 years old, Grey recalls a childhood spent poring over seed catalogs searching for the perfect flower he hoped to someday nurture with love.

Growing up adjoining an undeveloped parcel of land just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, Grey enjoyed the magic and splendor of flora while exploring this dark and somehow inviting mini-forest. Searching through weeds and tall grasses, his prize was occasionally his all-time-favorite, a lily of the valley in full bloom.

Today, Grey is a favorite of his local New York City's flower market where he can be found regularly indulging his passion to refresh his vases with the finest petals he can locate. Appreciating the splendor of his latest bounty, Grey celebrates the fascinating and unique sexuality of these beauties with intimate views of their petals, pistils and stamens. My Secret Garden is Grey's personal testament to the sensual and mysterious sexual universe of flowers.

With a deep rooted love for painterly abstraction, Grey's observations of lilies, tulips, roses, poppies, calla lilies, ranunculuses, daffodils, sunflowers, narcissuses, hydrangeas, daisies, and of course Grey's revered lily of the valley among many others, echo the feeling of the watercolors he has always yearned to create.

Joel Grey is an American actor, singer, dancer, photographer, and theater director born in Cleveland, Ohio. Grey is best known for portraying the Master of Ceremonies in the musical “Cabaret” on Broadway and in Bob Fosse's 1972 film adaptation. He has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award. He earned the Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2023. Grey’s photography books include The Flower Whisperer, The Billboard Papers: Photographs, 1.3: Images From My Phone, and Pictures I Had to Take.