Niki studied Environmental Science (BSc Hons) at Sheffield University (which included 3 years of Botany). After her children were  born, and time spent living abroad, she joined the Botany Department at RHS Wisley in 1993, where she worked, first as Administrator for the RHS Horticultural Database and later managing the RHS Botany image collection. She exhibited a number of times at RHS London shows, receiving a RHS Gold Medal for her exhibit of watercolour paintings in 1998. For some years Niki was commissioned to produce illustrations for the RHS New Plantsman and taught short courses in Botanical Art for the RHS at Rosemoor Garden in Devon. With an interest in the future of botanical illustration, Niki was delighted to receive a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust award in 2004, for a project to experiment with the digital techniques for botanical illustration.

Photography and digitally created botanical illustration
Niki now specialises in using digital techniques, including photography, to create reference standard composite illustrations, working in collaboration with botanist Peter Barnes. Her main interest is the depiction of plants of the British flora. She does not consider herself to be a photographer, rather an illustrator who uses photography. As well as a RHS Gold medal for painting, Niki holds two RHS Gold Medals for photography (2007, 2008) for her digitally created botanical images.