Fiona Strickland (b. 1956), Tulipa ‘Blumex Parrot’, 2019. Watercolour on Kelmscott vellum, 28 x 41.1 cm © Fiona Strickland, courtesy of the Shirley Sherwood Collection

OXFORD - How much do we really know about the plants and flowers in our gardens and vases? Beyond their beauty, many have surprising stories of exploration, exchange, and discovery. In Bloom takes visitors from Oxford across the world and back, tracing the journeys that some of Britain’s most familiar blooms travelled to get here. Featuring more than 100 artworks, including beautiful botanical paintings and drawings, historical curiosities and new work by contemporary artists, the exhibition follows the passion and ingenuity of early plant explorers and the networks that influenced science, global trade and consumption. Visitors will learn how plants changed our world and left a legacy that still shapes our environments and back gardens today.

The Ashmolean itself owes its existence to two obsessive gardeners who set out to 'collect the world'. In the seventeenth century John Tradescant the Elder and the Younger, gardeners to royalty and aristocracy, travelled to the Low Countries, France, Russia and North America, gathering plants, seeds, specimens and intriguing objects that later formed the Ashmolean's founding collection. In Bloom returns to this origin point, examining how plants were acquired, classified and circulated in the seventeenth century, and how the wish to grow and understand them shaped knowledge and culture.

Many of our most beloved species of plants and flowers, including tulips, roses, orchids and camellias, reached Britain through the networks of empire linking Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Seeds, dried specimens and living plants travelled along the same maritime and commercial routes that transported people and goods, a movement that often depended on the expertise of local people that went unrecorded in Western accounts. Some arrivals triggered intense public interest. Tulips fuelled the Dutch speculative bubble known as 'tulipomania' which, at its height in the 1630s, saw rare tulip bulbs being sold at the cost of a canal-side house. Ferns, orchids and rhododendrons too inspired later Victorian collecting frenzies. Other plants became woven into everyday life. Tea, now integral to British identity, grew into a powerful commodity whose cultivation and trade had far-reaching economic and political effects.

Oxford played a central role in advancing botanical knowledge. The University’s Physic Garden, founded in 1621 – now the oldest botanical garden in Britain - provided a controlled environment for testing how unfamiliar species adapted to new conditions. Early herbaria (dried, pressed plants), seed collections and teaching aids were developed here. The exhibition includes an extraordinary group of nineteenth-century papier-mâché models of enlarged plants and flowers that were made so that students could see intricate botanical structures for scientific study.

Another innovation featured in the exhibition is the 'Wardian Case' (c. 1870), a revolutionary sealed glass container, developed by Nathaniel Ward in the 1840s. This ingeniously simple solution facilitated long-distance plant transport and made it possible for living specimens to survive long voyages, encouraging the mass movement of plants across the world.

This transportation of plants came with significant costs to colonised and indigenous peoples. As European demand for profitable and desirable species grew, collecting and cultivation began to reshape local ecologies and economies. In many regions, land was reorganised for export crops and large single-species plantations, creating 'monocultures' that replaced local biodiversity and made communities more vulnerable to environmental and economic shocks. Britain’s role in the opium trade, which contributed directly to the Opium Wars (1839-60), was a notoriously exploitative chapter in the nation’s history. The global spread of tea and other cash crops shows how botanical collecting, commerce and imperial ambition often carried consequences beyond the plants themselves.

In Bloom also explores the visual traditions that shaped how plants were recorded and understood. Paintings, drawings and prints by some of the greatest botanical artists of all time - Rachel Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, Georg Dionysius Ehret and Ferdinand Bauer - show how artists and illustrators became essential to identifying species, comparing varieties and sharing information across borders. This was also the period in which Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) set out the system of naming and classifying plants that is still used today. This legacy remains visible in the work of some of the most celebrated modern botanical artists - Rory McEwen, Pandora Sellars and Fiona Strickland - whose exceptional works are also on view.

The exhibition closes with new contemporary works by Anahita Norouzi, Kate Friend, Işık Güner, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Justine Smith. Their works range from human-sized botanical drawings to spectacular tapestries designed from the perspective of pollinating insects. These are followed by Fran Monks’s photographic commission spotlighting five leading Oxford academics working at the forefront of plant science and conservation today, whose research is expanding our understanding of the environment, ecology and our changing climate. Seen together, these works demonstrate how the impulse to study, protect and reinterpret the plant world continues to shape both scientific thinking and public imagination.

Dr Francesca Leoni and Dr Shailendra Bhandare, co-curators of the exhibition, say: ‘In Bloom offers the rare chance to understand, appreciate and contemplate the histories of some of our best loved blooms. Unravelling stories of great scientific achievements, daredevil explorations and networks of exceptional individuals, it presents a vivid curatorial account of how our world was changed by our interactions with plants, through outstanding objects, with a conscious attempt at delivering an environmentally responsible exhibition.’

19 March-16 August 2026

After Abraham Mignon (1640–79), Flowers in an Ornamented Metal Vase, 1660-79. Oil on Canvas, 90 x 78 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Attributed to Emanuel de Critz (1608–65), John Tradescant the Elder, 1638-65. Oil on canvas, 79 x 62 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Attributed to Thomas de Critz (1607–53), John Tradescant the Younger as a Gardener, 1648-53. Oil on canvas, 107 x 86 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Everhard Kik (1636–after 1701) and Daniel Frankcom (active around 1710) Sunflower (Helianthus annus), 1703. Watercolour on paper, 50 x 38 cm. The Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, on loan from the Badminton Estate, Gloucestershire

Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826), Arum (Arum dioscoridis), 1788–1794. Bound volume with watercolours on paper, 50 x 33 cm, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), Banana (Musa paradisiaca) blossom with life stages of Bullseye moth (Automeris liberia), 1726. Coloured engraving, 52 x 36 cm. Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Brigid Edwards (b. 1940), Poppy seed pod, 1999. Watercolour over pencil, 38.1 x 30.5 cm © Brigid Edwards, courtesy of the Shirley
Sherwood Collection

Robert Brendel (around 1821–98), Teaching model of St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), c. 1860s–1880. Papier-mâché and wood, max 45 x 27 cm, Oxford University Herbaria, Department of
Biology

Plate with roses and tulips, c. 1575, Iznik, Turkey. Fritware with underglaze polychrome painting, diameter 28 cm. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), A ‘Forest Floor’ Still Life of Flowers, 1687. Oil on canvas, 47 x 44 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Simon Verelst (1644–1721), A Vase of Flowers, c. 1669–75. Oil on canvas, 44 x 32 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

May Morris (1862–1938), Study of oriental poppy, 1879. Watercolour and graphite on paper, 50.8 x 55 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Stephanie Berni (b. 1949), Australian Tree Fern (Balantium antarcticum), 2004.Watercolour and pencil on paper, 29 x 20 cm © Stephanie Berni, courtesy of the Shirley Sherwood Collection

Rory McEwen (1932–82), Study of a Yellow Rose, 1977. Watercolour on vellum, 57 x 47 cm © Rory McEwen, courtesy of the Shirley Sherwood Collection

Wardian Case, c. 1870, England. Wood and glass, c. 120 h x 80 w x 60 d mm. The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

John Ruskin (1819–1900), Study of Wild Rose, 1871. Watercolour and bodycolour on paper, 42.2 cm x 26.8 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836–1912), Orchids, 1879. Oil on panel, 40 x 49.5 cm. Private collection, USA, courtesy of the Richard Green Gallery, London

Herbert David Richter (1874–1955), The Indian Shawl, late-19th C. Oil on canvas, 125.1 x 100.3 cm, Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, North Yorkshire Council Collection

Anahita Norouzi (b. 1983), From The Circuit of Dispossession, one of a series of nine prints, 2022. Crude oil on translucent paper, 35.5 x 20.9 cm © Anahita Norouzi. Courtesy of Anahita Norouzi and Galerie Nicolas Robert

Justine Smith (b. 1971), Specimen Florae Britannicae, 2023–24. British pound banknotes, wire, wood, silver, 50 x 73 x 47 cm, Bank of England Collection © Justine Smith

Işık Güner (b. 1983), Fritillaria imperialis, 2024. Watercolour on rice paper, 135 x 66 cm © Işık Güner Collection of Işık Güner

Kate Friend (b. 1983), Anjelica Huston, Rosa ‘Sunstruck’, Los Angeles, 2022. C-type colour print, signed and numbered verso, edition of 3 with 1 AP, 153 x 122 cm © Kate Friend Courtesy of Lyndsey Ingram, London

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (b. 1982), Pollinator Pathmaker: a4WNehdyCgdiKwVhXKGDBM (Pollinator Vision, Midsummer), 2025. Tapestry; woven, mixed fibre, 200 x 288 cm © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd. Courtesy of the artist.