Bridget Gillespie

Bridget has been a Botanical Illustrator for almost twenty years after taking a degree in Graphic Design. A request to paint a friend’s wedding bouquet led to botanical specialism. She has exhibited in Cambridge, Essex, Durham, Yorkshire and London. In 2002 and 2008 she was awarded Gold medals by the RHS who purchased several pieces for their archive collection.

Bridget provided fifty-one stunning watercolours of different apple varieties for The Northern Pomona: Apples for Cool Climates, edited by Linden Hawthorne with contributions from many North of England-based experts, including Peter Blackburne-Maze, Barry Potter, Richard Borrie and Dr Elke Laver. Many of the varieties illustrated by Bridget grow in Helmsley Walled Garden, to which all profits of this book went to help sustain the fruit collections. She works from her studio outside Helmsley, North Yorkshire.