Collecting, classifying and designing: What three Gisborne gardens tell us about distance

Abstract

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1769, HMS Endeavour voyaged through the South Pacific, an envoy of Europe. This paper focuses on a critical aspect of Endeavour’s voyage: the collecting of plants. With their first landfall, in Gisborne, botanists Banks and Solander set about collecting and classifying specimens, amidst the chaos of first encounters, and the death of a number of local Maori. Looking back at this moment from the perspective of three contemporary gardens reveals three distances. First, scientific taxonomy imposes the distance of classification into a European system. Second, the collecting and classification of 40 plants distances them from the numerous remaining flora in the area. And third, an apparent distance between ‘native’ and ‘exotic’ begins to open up. These three distances are explored through three recent gardens developed in Gisborne. While each garden in some way references the arrival of the Endeavour and the collecting of plants, they develop different framings and narratives. First, the Banks Garden was created by the Department of Conservation at the Cook Landing site. Supported by interpretation panels, this garden is a conventional ‘exhibition’ of specimens. Second, the Endeavour Garden, is a private garden owned by an American couple, with a perennial garden based directly on the plant list. Finally, the 1769 Garden is being developed by Dame Anne and Jeremy Salmond, including not only those plants on the list, but also those that made up the ‘impression’ that the native flora would have made on the visitors from Europe.