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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/18/our-botanic-gardens-are-about-more-than-prettiness-or-even-science
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| Our botanic gardens are about more than prettiness, or even science | Our botanic gardens are about more than prettiness, or even science |
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| Let us cultivate our garden – and not kill it with austerity. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew is facing budget cuts, which threaten its vital scientific work. “People who think it is just a place to go to look at pretty flowers and flower beds,” said David Attenborough recently in defence of Kew, “are mistaking [its] importance”. | Let us cultivate our garden – and not kill it with austerity. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew is facing budget cuts, which threaten its vital scientific work. “People who think it is just a place to go to look at pretty flowers and flower beds,” said David Attenborough recently in defence of Kew, “are mistaking [its] importance”. |
| The research and conservation projects at Kew are recognised internationally for their excellence. For example, the Millennium Seed Bank project, in partnership with institutions worldwide, has catalogued and stored the seeds from over thirty thousand wild plants – chiefly those that are rare or threatened by extinction. These might offer new drugs, fabrics or foods – and perhaps do so in a changed global climate. | The research and conservation projects at Kew are recognised internationally for their excellence. For example, the Millennium Seed Bank project, in partnership with institutions worldwide, has catalogued and stored the seeds from over thirty thousand wild plants – chiefly those that are rare or threatened by extinction. These might offer new drugs, fabrics or foods – and perhaps do so in a changed global climate. |
| If this vision of public benefit is too abstract for you, keep your morning cup in mind: climate change might be slowly destroying coffee crops. Researchers at Kew Gardens are spearheading an investigation into the future of the popular but vulnerable Arabica bean. Scientists report that wild Arabica might disappear from Sudan by as early as 2020, auguring badly for agricultural crops there and elsewhere, including Ethiopia. Kew’s archives and expertise are needed to help secure, not only this needful world brew, but also the livelihoods of tens of millions of families. | If this vision of public benefit is too abstract for you, keep your morning cup in mind: climate change might be slowly destroying coffee crops. Researchers at Kew Gardens are spearheading an investigation into the future of the popular but vulnerable Arabica bean. Scientists report that wild Arabica might disappear from Sudan by as early as 2020, auguring badly for agricultural crops there and elsewhere, including Ethiopia. Kew’s archives and expertise are needed to help secure, not only this needful world brew, but also the livelihoods of tens of millions of families. |
| So what looks like pure "blue sky" research, like taxonomy, can actually be extraordinarily valuable. As Tim Entwisle, director of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens (and former director of conservation, living collections & estates at Kew) put it recently in The Guardian: | So what looks like pure "blue sky" research, like taxonomy, can actually be extraordinarily valuable. As Tim Entwisle, director of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens (and former director of conservation, living collections & estates at Kew) put it recently in The Guardian: |
| In Australia, we have an immense job ahead of us documenting life on our 7,000,000+ square kilometre continent, where more than three-quarters of the native plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. In just over 200 years, we have described about a quarter of the estimated half a million or so species. Are there new sources of food, medicine or building materials out there? Of course. | In Australia, we have an immense job ahead of us documenting life on our 7,000,000+ square kilometre continent, where more than three-quarters of the native plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. In just over 200 years, we have described about a quarter of the estimated half a million or so species. Are there new sources of food, medicine or building materials out there? Of course. |
| These are just a handful of examples from many world-class projects. My point is that institutions like Kew, in the UK and abroad, are at the forefront of plant and fungus research, and this work is vital in the original sense of the word: to do with life and its healthy continuity. Nature is, as Marx once put it, our “body”. And man, he continued in his 1844 Manuscripts, “must remain in continuous interchange” with this body “if he is not to die.” | These are just a handful of examples from many world-class projects. My point is that institutions like Kew, in the UK and abroad, are at the forefront of plant and fungus research, and this work is vital in the original sense of the word: to do with life and its healthy continuity. Nature is, as Marx once put it, our “body”. And man, he continued in his 1844 Manuscripts, “must remain in continuous interchange” with this body “if he is not to die.” |
| But there is more to science than immediate benefit. Botanic research, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted, can also be a “pure curiosity”. On the island of St Pierre, the misanthropic philosopher enjoyed a daily ritual of solitude and botany. “The different soils that occurred on this island”, he later noted in his Confessions, “offered me a sufficient variety of plants for study and amusement for the rest of my life”. He wandered, picked, peered with a magnifying glass, wrote and reflected. | But there is more to science than immediate benefit. Botanic research, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted, can also be a “pure curiosity”. On the island of St Pierre, the misanthropic philosopher enjoyed a daily ritual of solitude and botany. “The different soils that occurred on this island”, he later noted in his Confessions, “offered me a sufficient variety of plants for study and amusement for the rest of my life”. He wandered, picked, peered with a magnifying glass, wrote and reflected. |
| Instead of looking for the medicinal or gastronomic secrets of plants, Rousseau was interested in the logic of the plants – for the plants. In other words, he enjoyed their beauty, and the pleasure of analysis, but he had no professional or pecuniary agenda. For Rousseau, the plant was a small miracle of design, not a source of status, drugs or food. | Instead of looking for the medicinal or gastronomic secrets of plants, Rousseau was interested in the logic of the plants – for the plants. In other words, he enjoyed their beauty, and the pleasure of analysis, but he had no professional or pecuniary agenda. For Rousseau, the plant was a small miracle of design, not a source of status, drugs or food. |
| We need not applaud Rousseau's often eccentric romanticism to see the point: there is, for scientists and the general public, a genuine longing to comprehend the natural world, above and beyond immediate utility. These botanic institutions safeguard, not only seeds, but also that very human drive: to wonder. | We need not applaud Rousseau's often eccentric romanticism to see the point: there is, for scientists and the general public, a genuine longing to comprehend the natural world, above and beyond immediate utility. These botanic institutions safeguard, not only seeds, but also that very human drive: to wonder. |
| It is also important not to gainsay the value of “pretty flowers”, whether at Kew, or in Melbourne’s stunning Guilfoyle’s Volcano. Horticultural beauty is valuable for its own sake, but it is also an invitation: to thought. Every garden is a union of humanity and nature – it is, literally and metaphorically, what we make of nature. The borders of the garden represent a transition from wild or domesticated spaces, to this third space, which reveals our ideas of nature and of ourselves, combined in a single display. | It is also important not to gainsay the value of “pretty flowers”, whether at Kew, or in Melbourne’s stunning Guilfoyle’s Volcano. Horticultural beauty is valuable for its own sake, but it is also an invitation: to thought. Every garden is a union of humanity and nature – it is, literally and metaphorically, what we make of nature. The borders of the garden represent a transition from wild or domesticated spaces, to this third space, which reveals our ideas of nature and of ourselves, combined in a single display. |
| In an increasingly automated or seemingly sterile urban environment, the garden is a rare opportunity to examine our relationship to nature – and not simply as something purely "wild" and seemingly other-than-human. | In an increasingly automated or seemingly sterile urban environment, the garden is a rare opportunity to examine our relationship to nature – and not simply as something purely "wild" and seemingly other-than-human. |
| The garden is not, in this, some simple tonic for modern life. But it is certainly a uniquely stimulating work of artifice, which reflects aesthetic, metaphysical, ethical and political ideas. For George Orwell it was a laboratory; for Nietzsche an existential inspiration; for Emily Dickinson a promise of immortality. | The garden is not, in this, some simple tonic for modern life. But it is certainly a uniquely stimulating work of artifice, which reflects aesthetic, metaphysical, ethical and political ideas. For George Orwell it was a laboratory; for Nietzsche an existential inspiration; for Emily Dickinson a promise of immortality. |
| As a renowned garden as well as a world-class scientific institution, Kew continues to offer the English public – and many around the world – this reward: a chance to stop, slow down, and reflect on what Augustine called “the nature of things”. | As a renowned garden as well as a world-class scientific institution, Kew continues to offer the English public – and many around the world – this reward: a chance to stop, slow down, and reflect on what Augustine called “the nature of things”. |
| This might be considered a luxury by some in government. To my mind it’s a necessary part of any civilised life. | This might be considered a luxury by some in government. To my mind it’s a necessary part of any civilised life. |
| I’ll give progressive thinker and gardener Voltaire the final word, from a letter to Jean d’Alembert: “Tend your vines, and crush the horror.” | I’ll give progressive thinker and gardener Voltaire the final word, from a letter to Jean d’Alembert: “Tend your vines, and crush the horror.” |
| • Damon Young is a philosopher, and the author of Voltaire’s Vine and Other Philosophies: How Gardens Inspired Great Writers,out now |