The Silencing of Nonhuman Animals in the Social Construction of Botanic Gardens

Abstract This paper concerns the social construction of gardens, with a focus on the position of nonhuman animals in a specific garden type, the botanical one. As such, the paper deviates from the embedded idea in Western society that gardens are only home to cultivated plants and flowers of human choosing. This paper contributes to the ongoing animal turn of the leisure field and the particular focus on recognising outdoor leisure spaces as multispecies in nature. Through a newspaper analysis of the Otago Daily Times (1861 to 1950), the paper explores the socio-cultural history of a botanic garden. In finding silence through the analysis, it becomes apparent that the settler community of Dunedin, New Zealand, created the botanic garden with an invisibility towards nonhuman animals. The study of local newspapers suggests that over a century ago, the British colonisers of New Zealand lacked a nuanced appreciation of the multispecies nature of botanic gardens. This paper addresses these discoveries while thinking about the human responsibility for power use in entanglements with the nonhuman Other in the past and today.