ARS Tasmania Newsletter – June 2019

• Date: 5th June 2019

Vale Lesley Gillanders - horticulturalist, botanical artist

Lesley was born in 1932 in Swan Hill Victoria and moved with husband Ken to Tasmania in 1975 to start a specialist plant nursery. She shared 37 years at Woodbank Nursery with Ken, where her love of horticulture was displayed working alongside him as true partners in life and in business.

Ken and Lesley travelled widely over 32 years, being known for attending and speaking at international conferences and collecting and introducing plants to the horticultural industry.

Lesley also contributed greatly to seed distributions of the societies she was a member of worldwide.Lesley travelled to every continent climbing mountains to see plants in their natural habitat and collecting seeds including the sub-Antarctic islands. Her travels encompassed unique places including climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, the glaciers in Tierra Del Fuego, camping in the highland steppe
of Kyrgyzstan, the Andes and the Rockies, bamboo forests in Japan, Easter Island, Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, NZ, China, Chile, Equador, Egypt, Bolivia, Peru, Lesotho, Kenya, safari plains in South Africa and the Galapagos Islands.

Lesley was also a gifted artist, and her beautiful botanical and bird watercolour paintings have been enjoyed worldwide, and recognised in many displays and competitions. She shared much with plant enthusiasts as a respected and recognised regular writer in numerous Australian and international botanical magazines. Her last article was published in April 2019.

Lesley passed away very peacefully in May 2019, and is survived by her husband Ken, 5 children and a tribe of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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