Katharine Saunders (1824–1901) was a British-born Colony of Natal botanical illustrator, the sixth of seven children of the Revd Canon Charles Apthorp Wheelwright[a] and Anna Hubbard of Tansor, Northamptonshire.

The Saunders' first home was a sprawling thatched building with shady verandahs overlooking the Tongaat River and whimsically named 'The House by the Drift'.

Her interest in plants was furthered by the Scots horticulturalist, Mark McKen, who worked on the sugarcane farm in a temporary capacity and later resumed his curatorship of the Durban Botanic Gardens.

The quality of her paintings led inevitably to her sending of live specimens and corresponding with the Hookers at Kew, W. H. Harvey in Dublin and Harry Bolus in Cape Town.

Katharine herself travelled and painted fairly extensively through the Transvaal and Swaziland, also visiting her daughter who had settled in Johannesburg and her son, Charles, in Eshowe.