Wild Flowers of Britain

Month by Month

Margaret Erskine Wilson, late President of Kendal Natural History Society, was a keen amateur botanist and water-colourist. In 1999, she donated to the Society 150 sheets of watercolour paintings representing a thousand British and Irish plants in flower and in fruit, painted in situ over many years and in various places.

At the time she donated the paintings to Kendal Natural History Society, she wrote:

Begun in 1943/4 for a friend who said, ‘I might learn the names of flowers if you drew them for me, in the months they’re in flower’!

The result is this beautiful, previously-unpublished book of all her accurate and informative illustrations, painted over a period of 45 years.

This book today still serves Margaret’s original purpose in that it is indeed an attractive way to learn the names of our delicate and beautiful wild flowers.

Availability:

Illustrations:
148 Colour illustrations

Pages:
176

Published:
Sep 01, 2016

ISBN:
9781910723319

About the Author:

Margaret Erskine Wilson (b.1915), read modern languages at Girton College Cambridge, then studied Textile Design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, until the war broke out in 1939.

A career teacher, she finally moved to teach in the Lake District. She painted flowers all her life and exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Botanical Art Show in London, winning silver medals on at least two occasions.

She died in 2009 and donated many of her paintings of wild flowers to the Kendal Natural History Society of which she was a former President.