Margaret Pieroni OAM

After several years of treatment for acute leukemia from 1969, Margaret Pieroni OAM made a trip to see Western Australian wildflowers that she didn’t think she’d be able to make.

The trip encouraged her to move to Perth in 1974. From there, she spent 20 years travelling around WA to study and photograph species of the Dryandra flower, including collecting three never-before-seen species.

At a time without Google, people had to rely on photographs, illustrations and descriptions to identify species they had never seen before, she explains.

“I have been inspired by my love of nature and have been privileged to use my skills, working with botanists to bring the beauty of our wildflowers to people to allow them to identify the species and in many cases, to grow and protect them,” she says.

“I firmly believe that there is still a place for accurate botanical illustrations in scientific papers as they are superior to photographs for showing identifying details.”

Mrs Pieroni has been the founding member of the Botanical Artists Group Western Australia since 1991, and is also a member Society for Growing Australian Plants, the Wildflower Society, and the Watercolour Society of Western Australia. She has also been the leader of the Dryandra study group at the Australian Native Plants Society since 1987.

Her passion for flowers and painting allowed her to author, co-author and illustrate a number of books, including Brush with Gondwana: Botanical Artists Group of Western Australia (2008), Verticordia: the turner of hearts (2002), Discovering the wildflowers of Western Australia (1993) and more.

But for Mrs Pieroni, everything goes back to her time in the hospital.

“I would like to thank the doctors at Royal Alfred Hospital who treated me in 1969,” she says.

“After three years of chemotherapy, I made a long-wished-for trip to Western Australia to see the wildflowers and consequently moved to Perth, never thinking I would live so long and be able to immerse myself in studying and painting and drawing the plants.”