DARWIN’S LIVING LABORATORY / INTERPRETING CHARLES DARWIN’S GARDEN

CLIENT : ENGLISH HERITAGE

Charles Darwin used his garden and the countryside around his home for hundreds of ingenious experiments, fleshing out his theory of natural selection over several decades. This meant we had a lot of material to develop an interactive scheme making good use of our off-the-peg interactive tools. Five outdoor posts bring story and activity to key locations while being minimally invasive, and the potting shed clusters several more interactives together. Visitors play a fruit machine to experience the odds of a seedling surviving in a slug-infested lawn, activate simple animations to see how simple processes might turn into big effects, play a two-player quiz, and mix-and-match pigeon traits. A bespoke ‘Bee Line’ puzzle illustrates a fun experiment Darwin did involving his kids in tracking flour-dusted bees around his flower beds.