A Windsor artist is creating a flower guidebook for Ojibway Park but it'll take a while

A field guidebook is in the works to highlight floweringplants in and around Ojibway Park.

Windsor artist Sarah Smitherman is using watercolour ink to illustrate the floraand envisions the book being pocket size when it eventually comes out.

She saidshe was inspired bya trip to Mount Rainier in Washington stateand seeing illustrated identification guides for plants and wildlife.

"I do a lot of hiking and travelling and I've noticed gift shops around North America, United Space especiallythey have books in their gift shops that are about the areas in their natural habitats,"said Smitherman.

Smitherman, a graphic designer who graduated from St. Clair College and is currently studying art at the University of Windsor, received a grant of nearly $2,500 from the City of Windsor's arts and culture heritage fund to start the project.

She hopes to land similar grantsin the future as she makes her way through populating the book with different flowering plants.

"I do a bunch of different watercolour illustrations and I do enjoy doing a lot of floral illustrations and watercolour. So this is something I'm familiar with."

She estimates there are anywhere between 200 and250 different flowers in the Ojibway Park area, meaning the project is going to be a tedious and lengthyone possibly taking as long as three years, depending on funding and Smitherman's own schedule.

Smitherman saidshe's starting the book by producing10 watercolour ink illustrations for this round of funding. She hopesto receiveadditional funding for more images in the next round.

"I haven't reached out to other artists. So far, I'm the only artist that's working on this with illustrating the book," however, Smitherman does say she's "definitely open" to other artists contributing.

While shesaidshe'd rather go into the field to see the flowers first hand, she'll settle for working from photography.

"There's a bunch of rare plants that I probably will not be able to find unless I spend a lot of time looking for them with specialists."

Smitherman saidshe's been in Windsor for roughly the past 15 years and enjoys spending time at Ojibway, calling it "one of those special spots for me."

"It's definitely a resource that Windsor does not have for that area. We have other books, but nothing specifically for flowering plants of Ojibway."

When completed, she said she plans to donate the books to local library branches and hopes for it to be made available at the Ojibway Nature Centre.

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