MARJORIE Netta Blamey was born March 13, 1918 in Sri Lanka, grew up on the Isle of Wight, and after WWII ran a dairy farm with her husband Phillip at Boduel, near Liskeard, for 20 years.

She had previously trained as an actress, then as a photographer, but eventually in 1965, retired from farming to concentrate on her passion for painting birds and wildflowers. Marjorie’s new home was half a mile from the farm at Boduel, at Coombe near the East Looe River. Her garden was one of the new attractions featured in the 1991 National Gardens Scheme’s ‘Yellow Book, Gardens of England and Wales’; it was Trelidden, Coombe, a one and a half-acre created from waste ground.

On December 12, 1980, Clows Garden Centres in Stratford-upon-Avon and Leamington Spa started advertising their Christmas campaign with ‘We have specially commissioned Marjorie Blamey, the well-known illustrator and author, to create a series of cards. There are six beautiful watercolour drawings of some of the plants and shrubs that give all-the-year-round colour and excitement to a garden. These cards make an ideal present and will appeal to the expert and beginner alike’.

Exhibitions of Marjorie’s work were displayed in the Liskeard Public Hall, at her studio in Castle Street, East Looe, in the Athenaeum Theatre Lounge, Plymouth, and the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro for the Cornwall Garden Society. Marjorie was awarded the MBE in 2007, mainly for her illustrations in two million-selling books published by Collins: ‘The Scented Wild Flowers of Britain’ by Roy Genders in 1971 and ‘Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland’ by Richard and Alistair Fitter in 2003. Her reputation across Europe was that she was ‘the finest living botanical illustrator’, she was awarded three gold medals by the Royal Horticultural Society. Specimens of flowers were shipped to Trelidden from across the world, which she painted while they were fresh to add to her archive of over 10,000 illustrations.

In the March 16, 2018 issue the Cornish Times reported on Marjorie’s 100th celebration of her birthday, which included this quote from her daughter, Mandy Cole: “We grew up with plants and flowers all around us. When she was working on ‘Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe’, the Liskeard Post Office was wonderful at knowing that when something was addressed to Marjorie Blamey, they had to get it out to her quickly.”

• The town’s museum has a wealth of local knowledge and history on display. It’s website explains: “In the early 1980s, an exhibition of local historical memorabilia and information was staged in the town’s Guildhall. Following much investigation and discussion, including a public meeting, the town council endorsed plans and provided the funds to set up a one room museum on the ground floor of the town’s Public Hall...On May 2, 2002, the museum was unofficially opened by the town mayor and on June 6, 2002, it was officially opened by HRH Prince Charles, Duke of Cornwall.” To learn more about what is on display visit liskeardmuseum.com