Arboretum artwork

CASE STUDIES: Photographer Mark Smith and floral artist Felicity Jones at Eastwoodhill Arboretum with one of their latest artworks made using a Wardian case covered in magnolia leaves. This is part of an ongoing art project which is to feature images from Tairāwhiti. Picture by Rebecca Grunwell

Artwork made using botanical material from Eastwoodhill Arboretum will be part of an upcoming exhibition by plant enthusiast and artist Felicity Jones and photographer Mark Smith.

The pair went to Eastwoodhill to create and photograph artworks which feature a Wardian case — a timber and glass construction invented by Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in London, 1829.

This humble wood and glass terrarium — historically used to transport plant life around the world — is central to their work.

During the 19th century, such cases carried thousands of plants on ships headed for Aotearoa and made the return journey filled with New Zealand natives — many destined for Kew Gardens in London.

“We think Wardian cases would’ve been used to transport many of the tree and shrub saplings when William Cook began importing them over a hundred years ago,” Felicity says.

It was fitting then for Jones and Smith to visit Eastwoodhill — the National Arboretum of New Zealand — founded by William Douglas Cook in 1910.

Cook brought in about 5000 different species and cultivars of trees and shrubs and created the largest collection of Northern Hemisphere trees and shrubs in the Southern Hemisphere.

While in Gisborne, Jones and Smith also visited the 1769 garden in the Waikereru Ecosanctuary.

The garden features plants growing in Tairāwhiti when James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour arrived at the mouth of the Waimata River in October 1769.

Many of the species collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, as part of the Endeavour expedition, are now rare and endangered.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing art project and features images from Tairāwhiti, and installations using slash found in Tolaga Bay.

It follows on from the pair’s botanical photographic exhibition Case Studies and follow-up Case Studies South, which explores humankind’s relationships with plant life.

They hope to contribute to stories of our past — positive and negative — and join the discussion around the protection of New Zealand’s natural heritage.