Everardmr01

I have prepared a Wikipedia page for my mother, Barbara Everard, a famous 20th century botanical artist. I am trying to locate all her paintings, many of which were done in Malaya in the late 40's and early 50's and subsequently, on returning to England, until the 80's. The intention is to digitally record them and create a virtual exhibition gallery to celebrate the centenary of her birth. If you know of the location of any of her paintings or drawings, perhaps in private collections, please respond to this discussion page. Everardmr01 (talk) 17:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

This template should be substituted on the article talk page.Everardmr01 (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

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Re your article draft

I hope you don't mind me dropping by - I saw your question on the help-desk, and although it had already been answered, it piqued my interest.

Firstly, thank you for your interest in submitting material to Wikipedia; your work is much appreciated. If you'd find it useful, I'd be happy to assist you with the article's development - Wikipedia can be a rather overwhelming place for new editors, and navigating our maze of pages, policies, guidelines and community mores can be more time-consuming than actually writing the article content (as you've already discovered with our conflict of interest policy!)

Secondly, before we can think about moving your article into 'mainspace' (the area of Wikipedia where articles are stored, as opposed to where it currently resides in 'userspace'), we need to establish your mother's notability. This is the guiding principle of all Wikipedia articles; essentially it entails proving that an article belongs in our encylopedia through the use of reliable secondary sources. Including these allows a reader to verify the information given in the article, which we take especially seriously for biographical articles due to the obvious real-world implications of incorrect biographical information.

To get you started, as a very rough-and-ready way to start establishing notability I did a Google search on "Barbara Everard", expecting I'd have to refine it to something like "Barbara Everard"+"botanical artist" to get anything meaningful, but the first page seemed to relate to your mother without the refinements (results here). This indicates to me that she is almost certainly notable enough for a stand-alone article, so the next stage is proving it. We need to do this by sourcing what you have written, and obviously you're the best person to do this. I'm not sure how much you relied on personal knowledge to write your article, but even if correct we can't accept information based on someone's say-so alone (verifiability again!). Ideally we need secondary sources such as reputable books, newspapers, websites, etc.

Would it be possible for you to compile such a list? This would help immensely, and with the sources assembled we can then think about using them to cite the article content. The article needs some cosmetic work too, to 'wikify' it into the same format as our other articles, and possibly some copyediting for our house style, but these last are easily-enough accomplished once the content is in place. I'll keep this talk-page watchlisted, so I should catch anything you post here. You can also contact me on my talk-page (linked in my signature) if I don't seem to be paying enough attention ;) All the best, EyeSerene^talk 10:14, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear EyeSerene,

I did send you an email to your peronal email but mayne you haven't seen it yet. I would boq to your expereince and Wiki-knowhow and let you modify my script in order to have it put into Mainspace. In the email, I did insert a number of quotes and references to Barbara's notability. Such as:

Exhibit a) The Barbara Everard Trust for Orchid Conservation

The Barbara Everard Trust for Orchid Conservation has its main objective as conserving cultivated orchids, both species and hybrids, in particular old hybrids. It frequently supports National Collection holders wishing to increase their stock of cultivated species, but for many years has not had any request for conserving (old) hybrids. Subsidiary aims have been education and research, so it has supported the OSGB Journal and offered to support other orchid journals (but with no applicants so far). One of its other aspirations was to set up a National Collection under the control of the OSGB, but this never proved viable, although it was attempted. We recently offered the RHS an extra growing house so that they did not have to reduce the size of their orchid collection when they move into new (smaller) accommodation in the new greenhouse complex at Wisley in 2007 – but the offer was declined.

Barbara Everard was a talented painter, and in 1989 wrote about the setting up of the Trust in the OSGB Journal – an article that was reprinted in the 50th anniversary edition of the OSGBJ. She was on the OSGB Conservation Committee and had been much upset by hearing that on the death of a well known orchid grower his gardener had been told to ‘turn the heating off’ and all the plants had died. She provided the initial funding for the Trust, but its income of £3,000 a year is insufficient for her wider vision. Her longer term aim was for the OSGB to have: ‘A house with a plot of land (not too large) but room for, say two or three greenhouses – cool, intermediate, hot; a small laboratory space for propagation etc., and a sales area, where things can be sold in aid of the Trust; a vehicle suitable of collecting the orchids and perhaps a Curator and later on a student (or students) to learn how to grow orchids and help with the great work involved.’

At the time (1989) she hoped for a benefactor to give £500,000 to fund this, but 17 years on the capital requirements to buy the land and glasshouses would be at least this, and an endowment of another £2 million would be needed to cover the running and staffing costs from income. We are a long way from ever realising this dream. If we did, it would provide an administrative base for our Society and a permanent home for our Library as well realising some at least of Barbara Everard’s conservation aims.

Unless we receive such a very substantial legacy, the Trustees will try to place plants that are no longer required, often because of the death of the grower, by sending commoner plants for sale at OSGB meetings, and placing rare and unusual plants with National Collection holders or specialist growers. Any money raised is put into the BETOC funds, so if you have plants that you wish to be looked after, BETOC can help find them homes.

The current Trustees are:- Dr. H. Oakeley (Chairman), Mrs Val Micklewright (Secretary), Mrs. S. Mill (Treasurer), Prof. C. Bulpitt, Ms. K. King and Ms. L. Lachelin. (http://orchid-society-gb.org.uk/NewSiteDevelopments/conservation.php)

Exhibit b)

http://www.loebooks.co.uk/viewartcat.php?cat=82&page=3&numtoshow=10

Exhibit c)

Experimenting with dry brush technique Lisa created many detailed renderings of birds and flowers which led her to a wonderful correspondence with the accomplished English Botanical Illustrator Barbara Everard (“Wildflowers of the World”) who encouraged her to show some of her work at Kew Botanical Gardens, which she did. (http://www.southstreetgallery.com/Lisa%20Johnson.html).

I hope this helps. My next step would be to solicit contributions from those that knew her and her work.

Regards

Everardmr01 (talk) 18:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "solicit contributions"? Kittybrewster ☎ 16:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Article

I saw your question at the reference desk. The article on your user page needs some work before it could be moved to mainspace. The biggest problem is the lack of citations, which are essential to prove notability and to verify the facts within the biography: Original research is not allowed on WP. A quick google search confirms Everard's publications but offers little evidence for the biography or the claims regarding "leading botanical artist", other than a BBC public post by her son (you?), which would not meet WP's policies on reliable sources. If you can find some appropriate independent sources, I can help you prepare the article for mainspace. Gwinva (talk) 22:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Gwina,

Thank you for your comments - I also received the same for Eyeserene, who has been very helpful in advising me and helping to construct the entry such that it will prove acceptable.

I am in the process of discovering third party evidence of Barbara Everard's worth, which is what I meant by contributions. There is an obituary, she was also awarded a Winston Churchill medal and I do have other copy to add. In the meantime, the page has been moved into mainspace. Neversoft (talk) 10:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Re your note

Thanks for that - funnily enough I saw something when I was googling which may have been about that (I think it was a newspaper from Kuala Lumpur, but only a brief abstract was available so I didn't bring it up when we were discussing sources. I'm looking into how we use unpublished evidence - there may be a way through Wikisource or our WP:OTRS system, but I'm not sure. If all else fails, we could perhaps use a reference like <ref>Balfour, Maj. Gen. Jamie (Director General, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust), unpublished private letter in the collection of...</ref>.

If possible, could you indicate where the obituary was published (ie the publication details) so we can start providing references for the article? We don't need copies of the actual documents, just verification that they exist, have been published, and they say what the article says. If you look at other biographical articles you'll see how the referencing works (a good - if slightly random - example is Romaine Brooks). I'm happy to sort out the wiki-markup if that helps. Regards, EyeSerene^talk 11:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi,

I now have a photograph of Barbara Everard that might be nice to have - it is in black and white and shows her in her studio - with cat! - in the 1980's. It is annotated on the back in her handwriting and has the photographer's copyright details on the back. Neversoft (talk) 12:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)