Stories of horticulture and garden-making are often bound up with stories of empires. From the global trade in plants and the economic imperative behind botanic gardens to the acquired status and symbolism of certain plants and the realities of human exploitation, this series will explore the myriad ways in which economic and political power has influenced the seemingly commonplace activities of gardeners.
This January 8-part online series from The Gardens Trust picks up themes and ideas from the Gardens and Empires conference presented in June 2025 by English Heritage and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in association with the British Library. Some of the speakers from the conference will be expanding on the topics they presented, and additional researchers have been invited to share their perspectives. The series will focus on European empires and will examine their global impact and influence on plants and gardening. We will explore issues from the perspective of both the coloniser and the colonized, of individuals and institutions, of the past and continuing legacies today – and will see both the triumphs and cruelties inherent in the stories around empires, plants and gardening.
This ticket link is for the series of 8 talks at £56 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 8 for £42). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks
Talk number three will take place at a slightly different time than the other sessions, on February 3. First popularized by landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century, artificial ruins ranging from Gothic cathedrals to Classical temples had evolved into staples of British horticulture by the nineteenth century. Tiny versions of these follies were in turn developed for Victorian terrariums, where they sanctioned indoor gardening as a legitimate mode of horticulture by eliding it with Romantic art and literature. This talk will explore how miniature ruins additionally reveal the ways in which Britain’s pre-industrial past was evoked to validate its colonial present, bestowing an ancient pedigree upon the botanical spoils of overseas plant collecting. Culled from the tropics to the poles, the plants that adorned terrarium ruins in Victorian parlors became living emblems of Britain’s imperial reach, mapping the empire’s vast geography onto domestic interiors.
Lindsay Wells is an art historian based in Los Angeles. Her research explores the visual culture of imperialism, gardening, and botany across the British empire. She received her PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and UCLA. She is currently a Barbara Thom Postdoctoral Fellow at the Huntington Library, where she is completing a book on Pre-Raphaelite painting and colonial plant collecting. Her essays on nineteenth-century horticulture have appeared in several journals, including recent articles on tobacco and rhododendrons for Literature Compass, and Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature.
This session will be chaired by Dr Louise Crawley of English Heritage.
