Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) recently hosted the Hamilton Museum Educators group for a museums and technology conference. As part of the program, staff put together an exhibit to showcase two archives at RBG: the Centre for Canadian Historical Horticultural Studies (CCHHS) and RBG's institutional archives. CCHHS collects and preserves literature, documents, and artifacts relevant to the history of horticulture in Canada. The topic of horticulture is broad in scope; it includes any resource relating to horticultural plants and their development and use in Canada. The archive has many important scientific documents on topics such as phenology and plant hybridization. Popular writings, pamphlets and brochures, government reports, seed catalogues, and correspondence, photographs, slides, among other ephemera, also make up the collection. There are also personal papers of many successful horticulturists, like Isabella Preston and Art Drysdale. CCHHS' records tell us a lot about Canadian plants and landscapes and how they have changed over time. They also offer us a larger view of societal changes in Canada. Royal Botanical Gardens' archives keeps administrative records of the institution which includes historical samples of past stationary, plaques, china, photographs, and even drapes. This archives also has important papers of past employees including published papers, correspondence, and other intellectual works. Records of past events, corporate publications, and 80 years of photographs that capture the staff, gardens, and landscape make up a significant part of the collection. Erin Aults, RBG's Knowledge Resource Management Specialist, and I worked to put the exhibit together. Marie Minaker, RBG's volunteer archivist, suggested artifacts from RBG's archives to include. Artifacts were grouped into five categories: Canadian horticultural education, women in botany, historic seed catalogues, ephemera, and other special collections. All photographs are courtesy of CCHHS.
1 Comment
Bill
12/15/2017 01:12:46 pm
Really interesting work, and well-presented! It's always amazing, the gems we don't know.
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