Exhibition in Berwick puts spotlight on the work of talented Victorian botanical artist

Margaret Rebecca Dickinson was born in Newcastle in 1821. She lived in Newcastle with her family for 40 years before moving to Gattonside, near Melrose, in the Scottish Borders in 1859 and then, a decade later, to Norham – where she lived for a further 50 years, until her death in 1918.

She painted the wildflowers and some cultivated flowers of the Border counties and travelled widely around the British Isles collecting and recording her plants.

Although she was relatively unrecognised during her lifetime, she left an enormous visual legacy of watercolour paintings of wild and cultivated plants.

Much of her collection of paintings was left to the Natural History Society of Northumbria and the exhibition includes more than 30 works on loan from the society such as portraits of plant specimens from Norham, Kelso, Berwick, Spittal and Holy Island where she documented field garlic, brook weed, sea campion, beaked parsley, lesser water plantain and knotted trefoil.

Between 1886 and 1893, Dickinson embarked on a new venture. Combining her talents in gardening and botanical illustration, she painted detailed portraits of daffodils – many of which she grew herself.

These are now in the collection of the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library, which has agreed to loan a number of these works for the exhibition.

The exhibition, which has also been organised with the help of Berwick Naturalist Club, opens at The Granary Gallery on October 22 and runs until February 19, 2023.

It is open Wednesday to Sunday (11am to 4pm). Free admission.