'Identification'
148 engraved horticultural badges

As this year’s artist in residence, Elizabeth-Jane Grose has researched and categorised the existing plant material of the Meadow Gallery, which is home to a mixture of native, exotic and naturalised trees. As a result, the visitor will encounter throughout the site of the Gallery a number of trees temporarily ‘wearing’ badges of different colours and shapes, each inscribed with their name and provenance.

Trees like people are classified as indigenous and foreign. A similar debate to the one about immigration of people exists about the introduction of imported plants and some similar questions are raised. Are foreign plants a threat to the British countryside? Is the introduction of foreign species desirable? How many species have already crossed the border and ‘naturalised’ into the British landscape? What is it to be ‘native’?