Welcome to the seventh and final installment of the In A Sense series. These blogposts are linked with the In A Sense tactile exhibit currently on display in the Dalnavert Museum Visitor’s Center. For additional resources, follow the links at the bottom of this post. To see the full exhibit, drop by the museum or book a tour through our website.

While many of us learned from a young age that there are 5 human senses, scientists and philosophers agree that the number is likely higher. A neurologist may say there are 9 or 21, while some psychologists argue up to 53. The final two blog posts of this series are a nod toward these other senses including the spiritual/mental senses encapsulated by the “supernatural” category and the spatial/self-aware senses encapsulated by the “space” category.

*Rail, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway*, by J.M.W. Turner, 1844 / National Gallery, London

Our sense of space can seem rather complicated. It encapsulates our ability to balance, our awareness of ourselves in space, and how we move throughout our daily lives. The difference between Victorian spaces and our own can feel foreign and confusing if we do not understand the reasoning behind a Victorian’s decisions. Therefore, as we soak in the last few weeks of summer, let’s take a look at a particular Victorian phenomenon to help us understand the Victorian ethos around spaces: let’s talk about plants.

*Waterfall Orchid Display* courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine

The Victorian garden was a stately affair. Lawns were a European staple consisting of short mowed grass or chamomile, perfect for lawn games and afternoon tea. Rich families would have their own lawns while lower classes would have access to parks and fields, utilizing their own land for growing food. UK lawns were often surrounded by gardens which centered around two main aesthetics: low-level bedding plants formed into elaborate patterns, or the Herbaceous Border style, a dynamic look popularized by horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll consisting of contrasting colours and heights of plants. These types of gardens were mostly a status symbol and were often grown separate to the kitchen gardens which grew large portions of a houses’ food supply. While there have been gardens at large estates for centuries, the globalization of plant-life is a 19th century phenomenon. Victorians across the world could own orchids and tropical plants, brought across oceans and kept alive through specialty equipment. This European / UK aesthetic also came along with immigrants to North America which is why – at over 40 million acres in the US alone – lawn grass now makes up the largest area of irrigated crop on the continent.

With more and more daily activity moving indoors, Victorians also became fond of indoor plants. Large houses like Dalnavert would have solariums and outdoor glasshouses heated by fire or coal. Smaller houses would use plant stands and strings of ivy around larger windows to create jungle-like effects, including glass Wardian cases to keep tropical plants in a humid environment. A large collection of plants complimented the maximalist design look of the era and echoed the architectural lilt towards natural shapes. Unlike the Modernist look of the following century, Victorian plants were not used as a stand-out feature in a room but were used to fill spaces such as empty fireplaces during the summer.

The importance of plants in Victorian spaces should not be overlooked because they touched almost everyone. Kitchen gardens linked jobs on an estate such as a gardener interacting with a cook; flower gardens were essential for summer activities for adults and children alike and were heavily maintained; and indoor houseplants could be curated by families and helped create a fashionable look to a home. Even cut flowers and herbs had roles within upper-class etiquette in which one could send messages through floriography, the language of flowers. The fashion of certain plants not only changed the spaces Victorians moved through but has changed the look of contemporary spaces. We would not have lawns, orchids, or indoor palms in North America today without the influence of globally-minded plant-enthusiasts of the last centuries. (Why we have kept up this aesthetic is a different story). These plants show both the separation Victorians felt to nature through the intense curation of outdoor spaces and the need for nature in their lives with the prevalence of plants in the home.