Designed in collaboration with Viv (Hánqí) Li and Prachi Pansare
Software: Sketchup, Autocad, Enscape, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.
Slow Blooming is an immersive tribute to the resilience, intellect, and legacy of female workers at Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, unearthing their hidden histories and blooming them into public memory through sensory storytelling and spatial design.
The story of female gardeners
Slow Blooming highlights the cultural and social significance of female gardeners at Kew Gardens. Set within the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the project proposes a sequence of immersive installations that translate overlooked histories into a visitor journey—connecting social equity, female expression, and conservation.
Slow Blooming amplifies women’s roles across science, botany, conservation, and reinstates their stories in public memory. Unearthing intersections of equity, expression, and conservation with Kew’s living history.
Visitors will learn about women’s stories and reflect on gardens as spaces of knowledge, identity, and ecological care. Each installation narrates a chapter of their journey through time. The series begins with the Victorian era, honouring Annie Gulvin, the first female gardener at Kew. Moving into the World War period, highlighting women’s pioneering roles during times of crisis. Transitioning into the Post-War era, marking their growing presence and influence. Culminating in the Modern era and envisioning the next generation of female horticulturists.
Overview
Purpose
Celebrate the legacy of women at Kew by bringing their stories to life through immersive, site-specific installations. The project responds to a historically male-dominated narrative by foregrounding women’s contributions to horticulture, public history, and conservation.
Outcome
A four-era exhibition sequence (Victorian → World War → Post-War → Modern), structured through Kew’s microclimates. Each chapter functions as an interpretive moment—moving from recognition to participation.
Site
Spatial Logic
The conservatory’s microclimates become narrative transitions: shifts in humidity, temperature, and light guide the pacing of the exhibition chapters and mark emotional shifts across eras.
Why is the exhibition divided into eras?
“Slow Blooming” is not just a spatial journey it’s a temporal narrative. Each zone embodies a distinct chapter in the evolution of women’s contributions to horticulture, from overlooked labor to pioneering change.
By dividing the space into historical eras from the Victorian period to the modern day. The exhibition invites visitors to physically walk through time. Each zone introduces unique multisensory experiences that reflect the challenges, breakthroughs, and emotional landscapes of its time. The architecture of the exhibition grows more open, participatory, and reflective as the story unfolds mirroring the legacy of growth cultivated by generations of women.
Research & Insights
Research Question
How have the untold stories of female gardeners at Kew Gardens shaped its history and legacy—and how can these stories be celebrated?
Archival study, site visits, and analysis of Kew’s architectural and climatic zones informed how the exhibition could make hidden labour visible through atmosphere, pacing, and interaction.
Key Themes
Control — the glasshouse as engineered climate and curated narrative.
Power — who is recorded, credited, and made visible within institutional history.
Expression — gardens as sites of agency, liberation, and gendered meaning-making.
Precedents
Contemporary exhibition storytelling and symbolic use of flora informed the approach—using immersive media, interpretive rooms, and consistent narrative threads to connect personal histories with wider cultural meaning.
Narrative Structure
Beginnings
Breaking norms and first recorded women gardeners at Kew.
Resilience
Sustaining Kew through wartime labour and visibility.
Persistence
Re-entry into horticulture, science, and curatorial roles.
Flourishing Futures
A participatory archive shaped by future caretakers.
Spatial Strategy
Wayfinding logic
The journey is structured through legible paths and memorable nodes. Each installation acts as a landmark that anchors orientation and meaning, while climatic transitions form thresholds between chapters.
Testing & Iteration
What we learned
Many visitors were previously unaware of women’s roles in Kew’s history. Once introduced, reactions shifted to curiosity and enthusiasm—supporting the need for a dedicated interpretive journey.
Design refinements
Improve hologram materiality/visibility, refine tactile engagement for the interactive device, and expand audio-visual prompts to support varied audiences.
Audience voices
“I come to Kew several times in a year, I never came across these stories, I would love to see the entire exhibition.”
“Being a member of Kew I am interested in knowing these stories.”
“It makes me think about how when there is more women in the job, the quality of pay goes down…”
Greetings from Annie
Greetings from Annie is the first installation of series giving introduction to exhibition and narrating her story being a first female Gardner in Kew.
This immersive hologram brings the story of Annie Gulvin , one of Kew’s first female gardeners — vividly to life. Through light, sound, and narrative, the installation honours her pioneering role in a male-dominated field. It serves as a gesture of acknowledgement and gratitude, allowing visitors to metaphorically “stand along side her” and reflect on the long path towards equity and inclusion in horticulture. Her story becomes a seed for growth, reminding us how far we’ve come and how much still blooms from her legacy.
Ephemeral Blooming
Inspired by wartime resilience, the design evokes the transient beauty of growth under pressure. As visitors crank, trigger, or activate the devices, the garden responds with light, movement, and sound — a metaphor for women’s unseen labour coming to life. This zone pays tribute to the countless women who stepped into horticultural and land-based roles during wartime. Their contributions, often temporary and undervalued, were vital much like a bloom that flourishes against the odds, then fades. Through this ephemeral experience, we invite reflection on the impermanence of progress, the fragility of recognition, and the strength found in cycles of renewal.
Ephemeral Blooming 360 Animation - have a look around
An interactive metal flower that triggers movement and an oral archive of female workers’ contributions during the World Wars.
Emerging Voices
This chapter shifts from remembrance to recognition. As visitors step into the quiet intimacy of the lecture hall, they engage with archival visuals and interactive storytelling that amplify the voices of women who remained at Kew after the war not merely as temporary workers, but as lasting contributors.
It opens a discourse around women’s continued presence in the organisation: not only as caretakers or improvers, but as experts, researchers, and leaders. Through layered projection and blooming animations, the design makes visible what history often leaves in shadow the persistence of women who shaped the garden’s evolution long after the headlines faded.
By opening drawers and touching screens on an interactive wall the post-war era archives are activated.
Flourishing Futures
By adding paper notes to the sculpture, visitors help continue sharing and growing the female workers’ stories.
Flourishing Futures Live Image - have a look around
Once restricted to the margins, women’s presence within Kew and other horticultural organisations now shapes the future of biodiversity, sustainability, and botanical innovation proving that gardens flourish best when diversity is rooted at their core.
Here, design becomes dialogue. The pod encourage pause, listening, and reflection, while plantings evolve across seasons a reminder that the story of women at Kew is still unfolding. This is a space to celebrate belonging, presence, and possibility where futures flourish through the act of listening to each other.