Other Voices in Garden History - Collecting with Lao Chao

This series of illustrated lectures will explore the impact and legacy of empire, colonialism and enslavement on western garden and landscape history. Our aim is to bring back some of the voices usually absent from this history, to identify and fill gaps in our collective knowledge, and to explore new ways of engaging with the whole history of gardens, landscapes and horticulture.

The diverse range of topics and speakers will offer a new range of perspectives on the history of gardens and landscapes and suggest more inclusive ways of presenting and interpreting their stories. The series does not aim to point fingers or to encourage hand-wringing but is more a celebration of voices starting to be heard.

This talk is the fifth in our series aiming to hear voices previously absent from our garden history:

1: Guns and Roses: Humphry Repton at Warley Park

2: Historic Landscapes for All: Learning to Share

3: Learning from The Blackamoor

4: The Work of Ingrid Pollard

5: Collecting with Lao Chao [Zhao Chengzhang]

6: Telling tales about trees: the voices and stories that have helped build Africa's Great Green Wall

7: Working towards inclusive Botanic Gardens

8: Hearing the Voices from a Human Zoo

9: Contested Landscapes: Race and the English Rural Countryside Space

10: Other Voices in Garden History: Discussion Panel

This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links above, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 10 sessions at a cost of £40 (students £15) via the link here.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Week 5. 10 May: ‘Collecting with Lao Chao [Zhao Chengzhang] by Yvette Harvey

For years, the curators of museums and living collections, and their visitors, have been programmed to respond to and expect tales of the grand, death-defying adventures of our collectors, rather than the realities and injustices of what really happened on expeditions. In this lecture, Yvette Harvey will use the archives of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh to explore the escapades of well-known plant hunters from the perspective of others on their teams, and to discuss where credit should lie for the plant collections that have a huge impact on what is grown in our gardens today. The main focus of the lecture will be the Scottish botanist and plant hunter George Forrest (1873 - 1932) and will examine the role played by the teams of local Naxi people whom he employed to collect, process and label specimens. It will give voice to team leader Zhao Chengzhang and those who worked alongside him, acknowledging their valuable work and tenacity.

…..

Yvette Harvey is the curator of the herbarium of the Royal Horticultural Society based at RHS Garden Wisley. She has coached on the topic of herbarium management for Kew’s Herbarium Techniques course. She maintains a professional interest in the Flora of West and Central Africa and is on the council of the Natural Sciences Collections Association, whose mission is to promote and support natural science collections and the people that work with them. Her research on decolonising plant hunter narratives has been part-funded by the 1951 Royal Commission and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.