Plants are categorized through scientific taxonomies and systems and are often presented as isolated specimens. These established systems of botanical knowledge and representations maintain the nature/culture divide. How does that affect the way we relate to “nature” and how can we imagine different ways of looking at and knowing about plants beyond the dominant ways?

Wardian cart is a traveling research station that brings together people and practices centering on plants and our entanglements with them. It is a space enabling other ways of knowing plants, based on embodied views and experimental methodologies that encourage reflection and empathy toward our environment. The cart refers to the colonial botanical artifact “Wardian case” which was used to transport specimens from the colonies. I tried to re-imagine this artifact into a tool for facilitating workshops, through which we look at plants not as specimens but as situated subjects, to re-frame botanical heritage as a learning tool for a more symbiotic future.