Kirstenbosch is an important botanical garden nestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The garden is one of 10 National Botanical Gardens covering five of South Africa's six different biomes and administered by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Prior to 1 September 2004, the institute was known as the National Botanical Institute.
Marianne North was a prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist, notable for her plant and landscape paintings, her extensive foreign travels, her writings, her plant discoveries and the creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Marian Ellis Rowan, known as Ellis Rowan, was a well-known Australian artist and botanical illustrator. She also did a series of illustrations on birds, butterflies and insects.
Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia. As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.
Cythna Lindenberg Letty, was a South African botanical artist and is regarded as a doyenne of South African botanical art by virtue of the quality and quantity of her meticulously executed paintings and pencil sketches, produced over a period of 40 years with the National Herbarium in Pretoria.
Johanna Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst was a South African botanical artist.
Mary Emily Eaton was an English botanical artist best known for illustrating Britton & Rose's The Cactaceae, published between 1919 and 1923.
Elsa Pooley, is a South African botanist, landscaper, tour guide, and artist.
Barbara Mary Steyning Everard was a botanical illustrator whose work encompassed books, private commissions, botanical publications, gardening magazines, greetings cards and commemorative plates.
Marjorie Netta Blamey MBE was an English painter and illustrator, particularly noted for her botanical illustrations for which she was described as "the finest living botanical illustrator", "the best contemporary botanical illustrator" and "the top illustrator in Europe" in reviews around the world.
Alice Brown Chittenden was an American painter based in San Francisco, California who specialized in flowers, portraits, and landscapes. Her life's work was a collection of botanicals depicting California wildflowers, for which she is renowned and received gold and silver medals at expositions. She taught at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art from 1897 to 1941.
Evelyn Mary "Eve" Palmer was a South African writer and botanist. She was married to the South African journalist and adventure novelist Geoffrey Jenkins. Her best known work is her bestselling 1966 non-fiction book The Plains of Camdeboo.
Mary McMurtrieDA SBA was a Scottish botanical artist and horticulturalist. She wrote and illustrated several books of wild flowers and became internationally recognised for her botanical art. She continued painting and publishing until she was over a hundred years old, becoming recognised as the oldest working artist in Britain.
Lilian Snelling (1879–1972) was "probably the most important British botanical artist of the first half of the 20th century". She was the principal artist and lithographer to Curtis's Botanical Magazine between 1921 and 1952 and "was considered one of the greatest botanical artists of her time" – "her paintings were both detailed and accurate and immensely beautiful". She was appointed MBE in 1954 and was awarded the Victoria Medal in 1955. The standard author abbreviation Snelling is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Margaret Lawder (1900-1983) was an Irish and South African botanist known for her conservation work. In 1922, at the age of 22, she emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope with her husband Commander Edward Francis Lawder R.N. and they became official plant collectors for the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town. Edward took pictures of the flowers and Margaret wrote the descriptions of them.
Susan Sex is an Irish botanical artist known for her paintings of orchids.
Wendy Felicité Walsh was an artist born in Cumbria who lived and worked in Ireland and was a prolific botanical illustrator.
Mary Anderson Grierson was a Welsh-born Scottish botanical artist and illustrator. The youngest of three children to parents hailing from Dumfries, she was encouraged by her mother to paint from an early age but preferred watercolour over oil. Grierson served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a flight officer in a photographic reconnaissance unit and used the skills she learnt into use later in her life. She joined De Havilland's public relations department after demobilisation and moved to Hunting Aerosurveys in 1947. Grierson was sent on a week course in pen and ink drawing in Suffolk ten years later and returned there for another ten years after finding the experience fulfilling.
Edith Struben was a South African botanical illustrator and painter. She was the eldest daughter of Harry Struben, a pioneer gold miner on the Witwatersrand.
Jenny Brasier was a botanical artist and book illustrator.
