VIP Taster Session: SABG Across Time: Developing a Public History Project

This summer, we’ve begun uncovering the the Garden’s past, exploring our archives, living collections, and the stories that have often gone untold. Now, we want to imagine what comes next - together.

Join us for a collaborative session to shape a new VIP that develops a public history project at the Botanic Garden blending perspectives from the (environmental) humanities, natural and social sciences.

We will share some of our prelimiary research results, and would love to hear your ideas and perspectives regarding the form and conceptual approach, and what information would be helpful to gather at our upcoming community event 'SABG Across Time: Share Your Memories': a drop-in gathering on Sunday the 30th of November.

We will spend some time indoors and outdoors, with opportunities for quiet reflection and group discussions. All students and staff from the University of St Andrews are welcome! Please feel free to spread the word.

Schedule

1:00 - 1:20 Garden Tour

1:20 - 1:30 Refreshments

1:30 - 1:50 Brief Overview on the History of SABG

1:50 - 2:00 Break/ Refreshments

2:00 - 2:10 Workshop I

2:10 - 2:30 Group Discussion

2:30 - 2:40 Workshop II

2:40 - 3:00 Final Reflections

For reference, some information on our memory event on Nov 30:

Come together for tea and conversation, sharing your memories of the Garden as we consider how to shape the future

On the Sunday the 30th of November, we’ll be hosting a drop-in gathering at the Boiler House. There’ll be tea and conversation, and we’d love to hear your memories of the Garden, however you’d like to share them. That might be a story, a photograph, a sketch, or just something you remember. Feel free to bring memories with you on paper or USB, or simply come along for a chat.

If you cannot participate in person, but would like to submit something digitally, please feel free to send us a message via "memories@standrewsbotanic.org".

Gardens can be many things: a place of rest, reflection, or retreat; somewhere to grow food, spend time, or simply be. They offer space for both activity and stillness, human and non-human encounters, and thinking with the land. Though usually surrounded by a boundary, gardens are never separate from the wider world; they’re shaped by the relationships, histories, and ecologies that run through them.

In recent years, the Botanic Garden has undergone some changes. With the closure of the glasshouses, we've entered a new phase, less fixed, more open. It's become a site for experimentation, where different disciplines, ideas and practices can meet. In many ways, this isn’t a break from the past, but a continuation of the Garden’s long-standing role as a place of learning and forward thinking.

At this moment of transformation, we wish to revisit the Garden's history with a fresh perspective. What stories have been left out? What has gone unrecorded? How might we begin to piece together a picture of this place, its iterations and relationships, and its role in shaping our understanding of nature, culture and the environment across past, present and future?