St Vincent Botanical Garden Pop-up Exhibition

On 18th May 2023, the official launch of the St Vincent Botanical Garden pop-up educational exhibition was launched in the cathedral in Kingstown. It might seem an odd location but the Curators House in the Garden itself was too small and also Alexander Anderson is buried somewhere in the cemetery there.

The exhibition was designed as a pop-up so it could be transported, and also packed away. There are 6 double-sided 2m high banners each with a footer noting the logos of the organistions of the people involved in its production, and each headed by a brief overview of the content. The 12 banners included images and text providing information on 12 aspects of the Garden during the time it was managed by Alexander Anderson, so from 1785 to 1811. The text was written to be as accessible as possible, and the text boards are available online (when the British Library site works), and will be popped onto Issuu for ease of access (and in multiple languages)

The exhibition was a collaboration and very much designed to meet the needs of the Garden who have it on show in the Curators House when the cruise liners dock. A second copy of the exhibition was on display in the UK; in High Wycombe (England) where a large population of people from St Vincent live, and in Dundee (Scotland) at their Botanical Garden. I am hoping to get it into more venues to highlight the roles that enslaved African and Indigenous peoples played in the history of the St Vincent Botanical Garden in the late-eighteenth century, and Botanical Gardens and thus Western Science more generally.