Floral painting by winifred walker artist designed

If I ask you to name the most famous of all flowers painters I very much doubt you’d reply Winifred Walker,  yet that’s how she was described by a national newspaper a century ago in 1919. The description might be a bit of an exaggeration but there’s no doubt she was certainly  a more than accomplished painter who illustrated seed and nursery catalogues and gardening books as well as being an “official” artist for the Royal Horticultural Society.

Yet her story confirms one of the things I learned quite early on writing this blog, and indeed doing garden history research more generally, that it’s often more difficult to track down information about the comparatively recent past than it is about the 18th or 19th centuries.

It also shows how difficult it can be to trace the lives of many of the botanical artists who figure in the story, even if they are significant, and it’s usually doubly difficult if they are women.

My first attempts at s