The Sorted! by Science and Art theme for this first day of talks exploring how we bring nature to order is inspired by the Council for Education: Department for Science and Art. This august body commissioned the Garden’s Director, John Stevens Henslow, to draw and produce a ground-breaking set of botanical teaching diagrams in 1858.
Your ticket price includes admission to the Garden (opens at 10am), all the day’s talks, morning refreshments and sandwich lunch from the Garden Café, and optional tours at the end of the day.
The Systematic Beds: art, science or battleground?: Dr Sam Brockington, Curator, CUBG
Weird Plants: Dr Chris Thorogood, University of Oxford Botanic Garden
Morning Session II
Curating flowers: The Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection of botanical art: Henrietta Ward, Assistant Keeper, Fitzwilliam Museum
Worth a thousand words: botanical art, identification & documentation: Charlotte Brooks, Keeper of Art, Royal Horticultural Society
Afternoon Session
Professor Henslow’s art of teaching botany: Dr Lauren Gardiner, Curator, Cambridge University Herbarium
Edward Lear’s Garden: Nonsense Botany, Science, and the Nature of Order: Dr Sara Lodge, University of St Andrews
Afternoon session II: optional tours
Head of Horticulture’s picks
The Systematics Beds
Research facilities
Speaker biographies Day 1
Sam Brockington is Curator of Cambridge University Botanic Garden and a Research Group Leader in the Department of Plant Sciences, Cambridge. His research interests cover collection management and ex-situ conservation in botanic gardens, although primarily his research group is focussed on understanding the evolution of tyrosine metabolism in Caryophyllales. Sam has also led the research and planning underlying the re-organisation of the Systematic Beds to meet contemporary classification.
Charlotte Brooks is the Art Curator at the RHS Lindley Library in London, which specialises in botanical art and garden history, holding nearly 30,000 original artworks ranging from 1630s to present. Charlotte is also Secretary to the RHS Picture Judging Panel, which sees artists from all over the world exhibit their work. She is currently finishing a book on contemporary ‘Gold medal’ winning botanical art, due to be published next year.
Lauren Gardiner is the Curator of the Cambridge University Herbarium, and a botanist with a background in orchid and palm systematics and conservation, with field experience around the world. She spent over a decade on the staff at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with the last three years as a research fellow specialising in Madagascan species conservation. Now responsible for around 1.1 million preserved plant specimens and associated collections, she is developing research, teaching, and engagement projects to explore the treasures of this important university collection
Sara Lodge is Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-century Literature and Culture at the University of St Andrews. She has written three books and over 30 articles on Victorian literature; her latest book, Inventing Edward Lear (Harvard University Press), explores Lear as a musician and composer, a naturalist and scientific illustrator, and a self-elected member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Sara once worked for the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh and is never happier than when she is in a garden with a book.
Chris Thorogood is Head of Science and Public Engagement for the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum. Chris’s research interests centre on evolutionary genetics, plant taxonomy and biodiversity hotspots. Specifically he is interested in speciation and adaptive radiations in cryptic parasitic and carnivorous plant groups, as well as taxonomic diversity in biodiversity hotspots including the Mediterranean Basin region and Japan. Chris won a scholarship in 2005 to carry out his PhD research on speciation in parasitic plants at the University of Bristol for which he won the Irene Manton Prize for botany in 2009; Chris is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Henrietta Ward is the Assistant Keeper in the Paintings, Drawings and Prints Department at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. She has recently curated the exhibitions ‘Floral fantasies’ and ‘Crawling with life: Flower drawings from the Henry Rogers Broughton Bequest’. Before joining the Fitzwilliam, Henrietta was Curatorial Fellow at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Or telephone on 01223 357851
Or in person at 2 Wheeler Street.