South African botanical artist Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst grew up in Pretoria and began her career in 1939 as a mapmaker in the Survey Department of the Witwatersrand Gold Mines. After the Second World War she studied watercolour painting in Holland, tutored by her uncle Gerhardus Hilhorst, a distinguished natural history artist. On her return to Cape Town she made a successful career as a freelance commercial artist.

Not long after her retirement in 1973, Ward-Hilhorst embarked on a collaboration with the botanists J.J.A. van der Walt and P.J. Vorster at Stellenbosch University, which allowed her to pursue a long-time ambition to paint all the known species of the genus Pelargonium. Their joint work, The Pelargoniums of South Africa, was published in three volumes in 1977.

Ward-Hilhorst-s artwork, much admired by authors for its beauty as well as for its scientific accuracy, also appeared in monographs on Sarcocaulon, Haemanthus, Rhus,Plectranthus, Hessea, Strumaria, Gasteria, Serruria and Diascia, and was commissioned by 12 different scientific journals.

Ward-Hilhorst's output over two decades amounted to more than 800 plant portraits (almost 500 of which were Pelargonium) as well as large commissioned paintings for private collectors. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded her a gold medal in 1990 for her Haemanthus paintings, while in South Africa she was honoured with the Cythna Letty Gold Medal in 1988 from the Botanical Society of South Africa and with a Certificate of Merit from the South African Association of Botanists for her contributions to systematic botany in South Africa.

Sources:
J. Rourke, 1994, "In Memoriam: Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst (10/7/1920 – 30/6/1994)", Veld & Flora, 80: 67.