Jane Watkins attended Leicester Polytechnic where she studied Textile Design and gained a degree in Art and Design in 1976.

In the late 80's, when her children became more independent, she took up plant painting. In 1990 she was invited to spend a year in the USA with a commission to paint Frank Cabot's famous alpine plant collection in Wavehill, a national monument in New York, which culminated in a successful exhibition in Cold Spring, New York.

On her return to England she exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society in 1991, where she received a silver-gilt medal.

She also works as a freelance illustrator, mostly for children's educational books. Harper & Collins, Ginn, Jarrolds and Macmillan/Heinemann have published her work.

She now works for the National Geographic Society. In May 2000 seventy-five of her paintings of medicinal plants were published in a book entitled Nature's Medicine.