Last year, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) launched its first-ever artist-in-residence competition.
Open to amateur and professional botanical illustrators, the top prize was a commission worth £1,000 to be featured in their quarterly magazine, The Plant Review.
A panel of judges assessed the illustrations for their technical elements (such as colour and composition), how well they portrayed important plant features, and how aesthetically pleasing they were.
As editor of The Plant Review, James Armitage, says, “[W]e aim to entice and beguile, to make people fall in love with the spirit of the plants we feature as much as with their appearance, and induce in readers a fervour to possess and grow them. To achieve that through art, rather than words, is the challenge we present with this competition.”
The competition saw a variety of splendid entries, but 57-year-old retired teacher Caroline Jane Buckley – who took up botanical illustration in retirement – earned the top spot. So, we sat down with Caroline to chat about her artistic journey and why retirement is the perfect time to pursue your passions.
“When I retired, I had the time to pick up my pencils [...] and start drawing again”
Caroline has always been interested in art, but like many creatives, she found it challenging to pursue her passion alongside her career.
She says, “I took an art foundation course when I was young. However, I thought I wasn’t creative enough to do a full art degree and was worried about getting a job at the end of it. I didn’t have the sort of background where I would be supported. I needed to work.”
With this in mind, Caroline left her artistic ambitions behind, applied to Exeter University, and completed a combined degree in biology and geography. This led to a fulfilling 30-year career as a geography and environmental science teacher.
“I didn’t draw much at all for a very long time because I have two lovely daughters and was busy teaching”, Caroline explains. “But when I retired, I had the time to pick up my pencils, look around myself, and start drawing again.”
“Botanical illustration is a bridge between science and art”
While botanical illustration is a relatively niche art form, Caroline explains that it was natural for her to fall into it. As a self-described “outdoorsy person”, she spends lots of time hill walking and mountain biking in the West Pennines and the Lake District, drawing inspiration from the plant life she encounters.
“I just started to illustrate what was around me,” she says.
Plus, after retirement, Caroline worked part-time at Hothersall Lodge, an outdoor education centre in the scenic Ribble Valley.
“Some of the work I was doing there was natural history-type learning with children, which involved looking at woodland areas and plant identification books. So that kind of got me thinking about botanical illustration.”
As Caroline tells us, the aim of botanical illustration is just as scientific as it is artistic. As a former geography teacher, this connection appealed to her.
She explains, “While ‘botanical art’ is about creating beautiful pictures, ‘botanical illustration’ is more about the dissection of the plant parts. You have to show all the diagnostic features of the species so you can identify them. Botanical illustration is a bridge between science and art.”
“Doing new things gives you confidence and keeps you mentally active”
But Caroline wasn’t content to simply draw. Instead, she was keen to learn more about botanical illustration and hone her craft, so she returned to the classroom – this time, on the other side of the desk.
“It’s like with anything, isn’t it? You get into a hobby and think, ‘Oh, I wonder if there’s a group somewhere.’ So, I went up to a place called Higham Hall in Cumbria, which is an amazing adult education centre.”
Here, Caroline took a couple of courses, where she met botanical illustrators Marion Wilson and Susan Christopher-Coulson, who introduced her to various creative groups. One of these was The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Gardens, an organisation dedicated to the art of botanical illustration.
She says, “When you leave a very busy working environment, you miss that social contact and energy – especially in a school because it’s so vibrant and lively. So, I enjoyed the social part of those groups. Plus, doing new things gives you confidence and keeps you mentally active.”
Caroline also enrolled in a 27-month-long distance learning diploma course with the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA), for which she received top marks. In fact, her work is still displayed on the diploma’s information page as an example of excellence.
“As a teacher, you’re constantly learning and reading up on new material, so it’s not unusual for me to want to study. It’s just a natural thing for me to do. But I never thought it would lead to this RHS role. The desire to get better was purely the desire to learn something.”
“Finding out that I won was really exciting and very unexpected”
Caroline first heard about the RHS’s inaugural artist-in-residence competition in their monthly magazine, The Garden. The prize was a commission to illustrate all four 2024 issues of The Plant Review.
Caroline tells us, “I was out for dinner with a group of friends, and they said, ‘Caroline, you should do this.’ I just sort of laughed and thought, ‘Oh, no. A professional botanical artist will get this.’ But when I got home, I thought, ‘Why not?’ So I sent a scan off.”
Caroline’s entry, called ‘Late Summer Flowers’ (pictured above), was a study featuring fiery crocosmias, blooming dahlias, and plump rose hips. And while many botanical artists favour watercolours, Caroline completed it in coloured pencils, her preferred medium.
“They give me more precision and are a bit easier to control,” she says. “I also like the vibrancy you get from using coloured pencils.”
In short, Caroline’s submission amazed the judges. As the RHS reported, they were particularly impressed with how she managed to “capture the spirit of the late summer garden”.
When she received the call to tell her she’d won in October, Caroline was on a trekking holiday in the Langtang Valley region of Nepal with her husband.
“Finding out that I won was really exciting and very unexpected. But you go from elation to thinking, ‘Oh, heck. I’ve actually got to do this now.’”
“It wouldn’t give you that sense of achievement if it were easy”
For her first project, editor Mr Armitage offered Caroline three different choices of subject – one being a Tibetan cherry tree, which was fitting as she’d seen it on her trip to Nepal. So, in recent weeks, Caroline has been travelling to the Yorkshire Arboretum to study them up close.
“Obviously, with a tree, I can’t bring it back to the studio,” Caroline laughs. “So I sketched the bark while I was there and took loads of photographs to work from. It’s less scary now I’ve actually got started.”
But, for all her success, Caroline explains that she always finds the work challenging.
“I’ll come out of my studio and say, ‘I can’t do it! It won’t work!’ But you just have to keep going, don’t you? You come away from it and return later and think, ‘Oh, it’s not as bad as I thought.’ But yeah, that’s the interesting part, isn’t it? It wouldn’t give you that sense of achievement if it were easy.”
“Retirement doesn’t mean that you stop learning and doing new things. If anything, it’s exciting because you’ve got time to pursue your passions”
As well as honing her craft, Caroline is also interested in helping other budding botanical illustrators develop their skills.
“Sheffield Florilegium has asked me to run a day course for them in October – so that’s exciting,” she says. “It’s nice because it’ll allow me to combine my teaching skills with botanical art. That’s something I’d like to do more in the future.”
Besides her creative pursuits, Caroline is also looking forward to plenty more time spent outdoors, including a family ski trip in January and completing the Wainwrights – a collection of 214 peaks in the Lake District. “My husband and I have nearly walked them all,” she says. “We’ve just got nine left.”
For anyone interested in pursuing a passion in retirement – whether art or something else entirely – Caroline has this to say…
“Just go for it! You’ve got the time now. Retirement doesn’t mean you stop learning and doing new things. If anything, it’s exciting because you’ve got time to pursue your passions.
“There’s a society or club for everything. I didn’t know some of these things existed when I was working. But, you know, you finish and discover there’s a whole community out there. I think it’s very exciting.”
To see more of Caroline’s artwork and order one of her prints, head over to her website or check out her Instagram at @carolinejanebuckleyart.
Are you devoting time to your passions in retirement? If so, what are they? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.