About Us

Botanical illustration is not only beautiful to look at, but also serves the purpose of understanding about plants and, along with a written description the original purpose was to aid identification in an accurate way. This was used mainly for handwritten herbals of medicinal and culinary uses.

Originating centuries ago, before the days of printing illustrations, numerous copied illustrations became less accurate representations of the plants they were portraying. When the printing press was invented, it revolutionised the reproduction of books and illustrations which finally made it possible to accurately show the plants alongside a written description.

From the early sixteenth century onwards when plant expeditions took place in many countries, plants were brought back from around the world and in many cases pressed for herbariums. These provided a new source for precise botanical drawings and paintings and artists skills have been much sought after to record the world’s plants ever since. Even since the invention of photography, conventional drawing and painting techniques have been the preferred methods to describe, often with measurements and dissections, aspects of a plant, which scientifically represent the anatomy and botanical features of a species. Nowadays, since the further advancement of photography in the modern, digital age, there is now much wider acceptance that photography can actually play a part in the recording of species with much greater accuracy – sometimes microscopically – than previously. This allows botanical photographers to work alongside and in collaboration with traditionally skilled botanical illustrators who use conventional media such as watercolour for their work, and even for conventional artists to use modern digital photography themselves, to help and inform their work.