A South African Social Garden: People, Plants and Multispecies Histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

The dissertation with the title “A South African Social Garden: People, Plants and Multispecies Histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden” studies how the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa, functioned as a social space. The dissertation explores how as a social space, it was shaped by social relationships among and between humans and non-humans, especially plants. Understanding Kirstenbosch as a social garden allows the dissertation to critically engage the work of power in it. This ranges from the colonial and imperial formations of power in the southern African region as part of which the idea of a National Botanical Garden in Cape Town evolved and which shaped the practices of collecting, ordering and displaying plants in it; to the making of space and belonging and the history of work in the garden; to the deployment of plants as communicative vehicles of the state and the botanical garden as a stage for political spectacles; and to attempts to “Africanise” the botanical garden in the post-apartheid era. The understanding of Kirstenbosch as a social garden can serve as the basis for re-imagining it as a medium in which multiple epistemologies and ontologies can take root, which can enable the development of more just and sustainable relationships among all living beings, including humans and plants.