The Tropical Department

"The Tropical Department" enables a view into the Victorian Conservatory. In 19th century there was, for the first time in contemporary history, a building created especially for plants and their particular needs on the one side, and on the other side, intended as a place of pleasure and amusement for people."As an increasingly common but distinctive social space, the conservatory was balanced, sometimes literally and always symbolically, between culture (formal reception room) and nature (the garden)." - (Margaret Flanders Darby, Joseph Paxton's Water Lily from Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550-1850, edited by Michael Conan Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. 2002)