Zoe Dobson

I currently live and work in Sheffield as a Landscape Architect. My first venture into botanical art was the RBGE Botanical Illustration Certificate course, where I discovered that my love for both art and plant science could be combined with the medium of watercolour.

In my work, I hope to shine a light on the often-overlooked aspects of plants, by scaling up individual parts to emphasise their beauty and depicting the hidden world of roots.

Title of the Project:

Damp Meadow of the Dark Peak

About the Project:

The Peak District is made up of the Dark and White Peak which are differentiated by the underlying geology and associated ecology.

Sheffield lies next to the Dark Park, which comprises of an extensive upland plateau with steep gritstone edges that drop away to lower lying slopes and deep valleys; these landscapes include a tapestry of habitats: heather moorland, oak and birch woodland, fens, damp meadows and scattered hay meadows on the fringes. I was intrigued by the wildflowers found in the damp meadow at the water’s edge, which is a fluctuating habitat with varying levels of water throughout the year where special wildflowers can be found.

I chose to study these species as damp meadow is becoming an increasingly rare sight in the UK as our wild wetland habitats disappear; around 90% of our freshwater wetlands have been lost or damaged in England in the last 500 years and those that remain continue to face threats from pollution, unsustainable development, invasive species, and climate change. My project aims to shine a light on these special wildflowers.

Illustrations: