Between 1760 and 1840, exotic plants were imported from across Britain's empire and depicted in periodicals and scientific treatises as specimens alongside objects of natural history. Mark Laird’s provocative new book—part art history, part polemic—weaves fine art, botanical illustration, gender studies, and previously unpublished archival material into a political and ethical account of Britain’s heritage, showing how plants were not only integral to English gardens of the Georgian and Victorian eras but also to British culture more broadly. 

Drawing on Laird’s genealogical research into his own family’s colonial past, The Dominion of Flowers (Yale University Press) foregrounds Indigenous ideas about “plant relations” in a study that animates trans-oceanic movements of plants and people.  

This talk will show how, researched “virtually" in pandemic Toronto, the book’s three-part structure emerged: global, pan-European, and local. Following the talk, Therese O’Malley, a historian of landscape and garden design, will facilitate a conversation about Laird’s forty-year career as a scholar and practitioner. Prompted by one reviewer who claimed ‘Laird pioneered plant humanities avant la lettre’, the conversation will turn to botanical studies within the humanities.