My friend Philippa never finished her PhD but had many ideas about colonisation and the botanical garden "True to the spirit of the Australian garden, Philippa says the starting point for her thesis was to think about plants as cultural artefacts, and in particular how thinking about native plants is shaped and altered by time and circumstance. “Say you look at a photograph: objects in it draw out meanings which are independent of the overall composition. Similarly with gardens, they are the result of human decisions as well as natural processes. The objects within them, the plants and other non-living things as well, they’re chosen within the cultural frameworks we operate within, decision-making realms at a given point in time.” The Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne and Cranbourne have certainly framed native plants quite differently from the end of the 19th century to the present. Philippa highlights the ‘Australian Border’ project of the late 1800s as one example that worked on representing the flora of Australia in its entirety. “That was very much reflecting something about scientific thinking at the time, putting plants in broad geographical categories." RIP Philippa.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:33:42 +0000
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