OAiS Lab 02 · Years 2–3
RBG Kew
A garden built by empire, decarbonising in public
- Location
- Richmond, London, United Kingdom
- Coordinates
- 51.48°, -0.29°
- Field intensive
- Years 2–3
Kew now positions itself as an environmental governance actor and a conduit for climate knowledge. It also built the infrastructure of economic botany that helped drive the crisis it now addresses. We study what that turn makes possible, and where it stops.
The ground
What this site holds
- 01
Kew's plan to convert the iconic Palm House into a net-zero building by 2027, and its Carbon Garden, opened 2025.
- 02
The Landscape Succession Plan (2024) maps which of Kew's historic trees survive projected warming, and which do not.
- 03
Seeds of Empire and Flora Indica (2025) recovers the Indian artists employed by the East India Company and names them as co-creators of botanical knowledge.
Research questions
- Can an institution decouple its collections and infrastructure from the colonial system that assembled them?
- What counts as conservation when the collection itself is a colonial archive?
- How does a botanic garden translate horticultural expertise into climate governance?
Planned outputs
- Augmented reality curation of the Net Zero Palm House project
- Plant narratives for the Plant Humanities Lab (Dumbarton Oaks)
- Summer Institute and Spec Life Symposium, Brock (Year 2)
Cluster leads
Kathryn Yusoff
Queen Mary, University of London
Jill Didur
Concordia University
Mark Nesbitt
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Michael Hrebeniak
New School of the Anthropocene
Partners on this lab
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
United Kingdom
New School of the Anthropocene
United Kingdom