Ecologies

Historic Houses, Global Crossroads Research Blend 2: Ecologies

RB2 is generating eco-cultural and bio-prospecting histories of the many ‘exotic’ plants, animals and trees brought from Asia, Australia and the Americas that make Mount Stewart and Clandeboye famous. We are building histories of the ‘plant hunters’ who were commissioned to collect the plants and trees, supported and funded by wider scientific and acquisitive networks, examining ‘arboreal empire’ (Arnold, 2020), the creation of plausible ‘neo-Europes’, the transferability of species, the ideology of ‘improvement’ in tension with ‘green imperialism’, developing awareness of finite resources.

RB2 is uncovering how local expertise was used, generating new data on global plant disease networks, and exploring how the ecological histories of each site impacts interdisciplinary debate on climate adaptation and global commodity exchange. We are examining reverse arboreal colonialism and processes whereby the ‘exotic’, ‘wild’ and ‘invasive’ became part of ‘common environments’, such as Mount Stewart’s Gulf Stream ecosystem, home to 70,000 migrating seabirds.