Botanical artist Sally Grace Bunker’s journey from the ‘garden of England’ to Hong Kong’s countryside
British artist and teacher Sally Grace Bunker once spent 7 years creating watercolours of 100 indigenous trees for the University of Hong Kong
MY MOTHER WAS a nurse and my father was in local government in Kent. My twin sister studied botany. My older sister became a physiotherapist. We had lots of chickens in the garden and grew our own vegetables. I enjoyed athletics and went right up to doing the Southern Counties Championship. I had lots of medals. I could run very fast, actually. My father used to take me to London, where I was trained by a professional, but I realised I didn’t want to spend my life just jumping over hurdles.
I also enjoyed ballet, which I thought I would do as a career, but ballet wasn’t quite right for me. I couldn’t get my right leg up over my head because I had something wrong with my hip from doing a lot of hurdling. So, I became a physical education teacher. I went to Chelsea College of Physical Education, in Eastbourne, and specialised in dancing.
IN 1970, MY TWIN sister and I went with my parents on a sailing holiday. And this guy (Bob Bunker) was chatting away to my parents in front of me. I was already with another guy, but I looked at my sister and said, “I’m going to marry him,” without even talking to him. In 1971, we got married in Westminster Abbey, because Bob’s father was a Companion of the Order of the Bath, and members of the order and their offspring have the right to be married in Westminster Abbey. The wedding had to be done in wintertime because it’s a bit too crowded in the summer. My mother made me the most beautiful white velvet medieval dress.
I HAVE TWO SONS, Edward and William, and Edward’s here in Hong Kong. He does reiki. He’s been given a gift. William is 18 months younger and is a beekeeper in London and runs a computer company. Bob was a banker and in the 1970s we lived in St Albans (northwest of London). It’s a lovely city. I was still doing athletics and did dancing classes for children. I suffer from Raynaud’s syndrome, which basically means I can’t tolerate cold weather and I’ve lost fingers. Bob was offered a two-year contract in Hong Kong, and I looked it up to see where it is on the map and saw that it could be quite hot! So, we got on a plane with a five-year-old and a three-year-old and that was it. We came here in 1979. We had banking accommodation but we loved Lantau. We bought a weekend place on the island in 1986 and then moved here permanently in 1997.
HONG KONG HAS everything that I love. I love the islands and flora here, and it was lovely to be a teacher here, to be able to have children from different countries. Initially I taught keep-fit classes and then in 1992, I started helping out at Parkview Kindergarten. In 1997, I set up my own school, Leafy – Lantau Educational Activities for the Young. I wanted to teach children through nature. It did very well, because in 1998 the international airport opened on Lantau, and suddenly there was a rush of pilots with young kids and they wanted international kindergartens. It was such fun.
I DECIDED TO teach through environmental studies. I did many outdoor activities to get the children to understand how important trees and plants are. The complexity of just being out in the countryside held a huge amount of interest for them and they learned a lot. It’s actually quite bad for them to be behind a desk all the time. The Education Bureau liked my curriculum for international kindergartens and adopted it. It’s a nice village kindergarten. I left in 2009 but I still own the school and building.
WHEN I WAS a teenager, I was very interested in art and everyone said I should become an artist. But I had this awful feeling that if I did art, I would be bad at it. I wasn’t. I was a botanical artist but I didn’t realise that at the time. In 2009, artist Lorette Roberts asked me to attend her sketching trips out and about. She got rather annoyed with me because I kept staying in one place and doing absolute details of things I saw. She’s the one who pushed me to do a three-year course with the London School of Arts, which I did through distance learning. I was later awarded a fellowship from the UK Society of Botanical Artists.
