Breaking the Binary is a horticultural display, commissioned by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew for their autumn festival centred around the theme Queer Nature. Found within one of the Octagonal glasshouses within Kew’s Temperate House, it is open to the public from 30 September - 29th October 2023.
In the summer of 2023, we ran three workshops with Kew’s Youth Forum, where they collaborated with us to consider ways that queerness can inform how we perceive plants and ecosystems. Borne from these sessions, our horticultural display features a range of plant species that reproduce in ways that challenge the binary language of ‘male’ and ‘female’ that have been projected onto the sexual organs of plants. It also considers how botanical gardens may be designed beyond taxonomic groups – reimagining plant classification as queer ‘chosen families’ which consist of a diverse range of mutually supportive individuals.
We wanted to work within the parameters of the existing structure, but giving it a new twist. This began with breaking up the geometric shape of the octagonal glasshouse by building curved beds. We did this by drawing a star that joined each corner of the glasshouse, before twisting it on its central axis to create a swirling blueprint for bed shapes that echo the shape of a dandelion’s parachute-like seed. Dandelions have the ability to reproduce asexually, subverting binarymodels of sexual reproduction
Alongside four bespoke spiralling beds, brimming to the edges with unusual plant specimens, we also commissioned queer illustrators Jules Scheele and Alex Simões to create artwork for our exhibition interpretation boards, which accessibly explained what exactly queer nature is, and how just some of our selected plants exemplify it!
The festival received wide press attention, from publications including The Guardian, Time Out, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio London, The Evening Standard, Gardens Illustrated, Country & Townhouse, Homes & Interiors and many more. Click here to read an interview with Patrick on Financial Times on our project.
