Field Guide to the Botanical Imaginary: An Anti-Colonial Walk in Kew
This project – a walk, field guide and audio tour of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew – is an experiment in broadening the botanical imaginary, subverting it to encompass the agency of humans and more-than-humans on multiple timescales and across distant landscapes.
On our walk, we hear the stories of two seeds that changed the world: Hevea brasiliensis, a tree whose sap powered the industrial revolution, and Cinchona, a tree whose bark can cure malaria. Under the glassy skies of the Palm and Temperate Houses, their stories have been muted. But if we listen, we may glimpse some strands of their entangled paths. As these strands begin to weave together, they form stories of not only the plants’ own existences, but of our current planetary crisis.
From the start, botanical knowledge played a key role in colonial expeditions. As plants of economic value were transferred between colonies, a network of colonial botanical gardens took shape. These garden outposts were catalogues of local flora, and testing grounds for the introduction of new species, often through the formation of plantations.
Kew has long proclaimed itself a laboratory. Initially a Royal pleasure garden, it became a laboratory of empire in the 19th century. Now, it acts as a laboratory for scientific conservationism. What if Kew was a laboratory for nurturing human-plant reciprocity? Instead of plants being specimens for human study, how can the garden celebrate more-than-human agency? What if Kew was a microcosm of collective multispecies care?
This project was completed in 2023 at the Architectural Association.
The field guide with corresponding maps and pamphlets
Research drawing that charts the journey of the rubber tree from Brazil, through Kew, and to plantations in Ceylon and British Malay
A possible future in Kew: a diasporic community garden reclaims the land in front of the Palm House
A map of Kew’s extracted landscapes
A map of Kew’s possible ‘reciprocal’ landscapes
What if the seeds held within the Millennium Seed Bank sprouted?