Dr Shirley Sherwood trained as a botanist at The University of Oxford and has travelled the world looking for botanical artists and their work, excited by the expanding field of this old/new discipline. Since 1990 she has built one of the most important private contemporary botanical art collections in the world, comprising over 1,000 works by 303 artists from 36 countries. She was awarded a Veitch Memorial Medal by the RHS in 2004 and in 2012 received an OBE for services to botanical art.