Following on from the success of This is What You Get exploring the visual art of Stanley Donwood, Thom Yorke and Radiohead, this spring the Ashmolean will be inviting visitors to explore In Bloom and find out more about some of Britain’s most familiar plants and flowers and how they travelled to get here. More than 100 artworks and curiosities – including both new work by contemporary artists and historical objects and allow us to learn more about the global networks that influenced science, trade and consumer taste.
Co-curators of the exhibition, Dr Francesca Leoni and Dr Shailendra Bhandare describe it as “the rare chance to understand, appreciate and contemplate the histories of some of our best loved blooms. Unravelling stories of great scientific achievements, daredevil explorations and networks of exceptional individuals, it presents a vivid curatorial account of how our world was changed by our interactions with plants, through outstanding objects, with a conscious attempt at delivering an environmentally responsible exhibition”.
In the seventeenth century, two gardeners to royalty and aristocracy, John Tradescant the Elder and the Younger, travelled the world gathering plants, seeds and specimens to form a collection which would become the origin point for the Ashmolean, Britain’s first public museum.
From the seventeenth century, the wish to grow and understand plants has shaped knowledge and culture, and the exhibition brings us to right up to the present day in the final gallery where contemporary artwork is shown alongside the profiles of five of Oxford University’s academics, each of whom is at the forefront of plant science and conservation.
In fact, Oxford has long played a central role in advancing botanical knowledge. The University’s Physic Garden – founded in 1621 and now the oldest botanical garden in Britain – has long provided a controlled environment for learning more about unfamiliar species including how they adapted to new conditions. Regular readers of OX may remember the series of fascinating features by Dr Chris Thorogood, Deputy Director and Head of Science at the Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum. He believes that “plants hold many of the solutions to our global challenges”.
Works on display at the Ashmolean include paintings, drawings and prints by some of the greatest botanical artists of all time including Rachel Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, Georg Dionysius Ehret and Ferdinand Bauer as well as some of the most celebrated modern botanical artists, Rory McEwen, Pandora Sellars and Fiona Strickland. These reflect the legacy of Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, author of the foundational work, Systema Naturae (1735), which set out his system of naming and classifying plants and still used today.
From the heady glamour of ‘tulipomania’ in 1630s Holland or the typically Victorian passion for collecting ferns, orchids and rhododendrons, right down to the adoption of a nice cup of tea into the everyday domestic life of the UK, plants have played a key part in driving the global economy. Many of our most beloved species, including roses, orchids and camellias, reached Britain through the networks of empire linking Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Seeds, dried specimens and living plants travelled along the same routes which transported people and goods. Historically overlooked in Western accounts, this movement was often dependent on the expertise of local people, and the exhibition looks at how the transportation of plants adversely impacted on the lives of colonised and indigenous peoples.
In Bloom, How Plants Changed Our World is at the Ashmolean from 19 March-16 August 2026. For further information include booking details, visit ashmolean.org.
