Written by: Elena Rizzi and Monica Azzolini

In late May 2026, the Botanical Gardens Cluster met in Bologna for an intense and productive three-and-a-half-day series of workshops. Organised by Professors Monica Azzolini, Mette Bruinsma, Richard Calis, and Juri Nascimbene, these workshops were key to aligning the research objectives of the Dutch, Surinamese, and Italian units. Conversations held in university rooms were enriched by site visits in Bologna, Padua, and Florence. The ultimate goal is to identify strategies and methods useful for provenance research and to translate these insights into a shared educational programme centred on Botanical Gardens as sites of university colonial heritage.

On the first day, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Mette Bruinsma and Richard Calis led two workshops aimed at discussing the objectives and themes of the Botanical Gardens Cluster. In small groups and plenary sessions, the team considered several topics of interest to the project. The group ultimately agreed on the necessity of adopting a more-than-human perspective to examine the relationships between humans and plants that underpinned the formation of university botanical collections of colonial origin. Yet many questions remained unanswered at the end of the first morning: What should be at the core of the provenance report? How should the postdoctoral researchers create links among research conducted in the three different local contexts? To what extent should the provenance research be reflected in the heritage intervention?

After lunch, Monica Azzolini guided the group on a visit to the spectacular collections of the Museo di Palazzo Poggi. Palazzo Poggi, one of the main museums of the University of Bologna, re-opened in a new guise in January 2026. The Museum houses key surviving pieces of the extraordinary natural history collection assembled by the Bolognese naturalist and professor Ulisse Aldrovandi, among the first European scholars to devote sustained attention to plants from distant lands, especially the Americas. Aldrovandi also played a central role in the foundation of Bologna’s first botanical garden. Motivated by an interest in the medicinal properties of plants as well as their generation, growth, and cultivation, he compiled a vast herbarium siccum and recorded hundreds of species, both native and exotic, through detailed descriptions and illustrations. His herbarium, now preserved by the Botanical Garden of Bologna, contains one of the oldest surviving specimen of a tomato plant known in Europe. Complementing this collection are woodcuts and watercolours of plants, preserved today in the Museum and the University Library Special Collections.

The day ended with presentations by the postdoctoral researchers. Rosa de Jong shared the findings of her research on the Surinamese botanist Hendrik Charles Focke (1802-1856) and his botanical collections. Luca Di Nuzzo offered interesting quantitative insights into the extra-European provenance of specimens in Italian herbaria. Didi van Trijp’s presentation focused on the challenges of bridging research and heritage practice. Finally, mo gave a brief overview of the case studies she intends to address in her research on the Italian context. The four talks offered a glimpse of the rich contribution that the project can make by bringing together researchers with different backgrounds: a botanist such as Luca and three historians with different specialisations (Rosa, Didi, and Elena).

On Wednesday, May 20, the group travelled to Padua to visit the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum of the University. Professor Elena Canadelli, scientific director of the Museum, welcomed the COLUMN crew at the entrance to the Garden, which was founded in 1545. While guiding the group through the Renaissance Garden and the new Biodiversity Garden, she introduced them to the digitisation project of several Italian herbaria that she led within the framework of the National Biodiversity Future Centre – the data resulting from this digitization effort will be fundamental for the Bologna unit in drafting its provenance report! The group then visited the Museum, which displays a selection of the botanical collections of the University, including herbarium sheets, wall charts, fungi models, and seed collections. The COLUMN team also visited the historical herbarium of the University of Padua, located on the first floor of the building that houses the Museum. There, collection technician Dalida Giacobbe briefly introduced the herbarium collections, while Claudia Addabbo, Valentina Boscariol and Luca Tonetti (members of Canadelli’s research group) gave insightful presentations on specimens of colonial origin that are at the core of their current research, dealing respectively with Achille Forti (1878-1937), Silvia Zenari (1895-1956), and Alessandro Trotter (1874-1967).

The day after, the group took an early morning train to Florence to visit the Centro Studi Erbario Tropicale (Tropical Herbarium Study Centre, formerly known as the Colonial Herbarium and Museum and later renamed the Tropical Herbarium of Florence). There, technician-curator Lia Pignotti warmly welcomed the team. She briefly presented the institution’s main objectives and its history. Founded in Rome as the Colonial Herbarium and Museum in 1904 to preserve and study specimens collected in East Africa since the end of the 19^th century, it was transferred to Florence in 1914. By showing two specimens collected in Eritrea by the gardener of the Colonial Herbarium (Agostino Pappi), Lia Pignotti explained to the group the functioning of the herbarium as well as how to look at these fragile materials. She generously answered the many questions that the group had about the size and variety of the collection, as well as issues concerning the restitution of botanical specimens collected during the colonial period. The Herbarium houses a remarkable collection, not only because of its size but also because of its extraordinary variety that captures a significant portion of the biodiversity of our planet!

The two visits were key in helping the team reflect on the content of the provenance report. Back in Bologna, all members convened in a workshop led by Monica Azzolini to discuss the provenance report in more detail, as well as the heritage intervention. After conversations in small groups, the entire team agreed on the report’s content: it should explore the colonial provenance of herbarium collections. While a decision was reached regarding the report, the heritage intervention remained the subject of passionate discussion: Where should it take place? Should it reflect provenance research? What should it be about: colonial herbaria, colonial appropriation of nature, or biodiversity loss? The discussion continued the day after.

On Friday, May 22, the group spent their final morning together at the fascinating Botanical Garden of the University of Bologna directed by Juri Nascimbene. Along with curator Umberto Mossetti, he introduced the COLUMN crew to the history of the Garden as well as to its collections. In particular, Mossetti showed the group marvellous specimens collected during the travels of Elena of Orléans (1871-1951), Duchess of Aosta, in East Africa in the early 20^th century. The group then met up in one of the labs at the Botanical Garden for a final conversation on the heritage intervention guided by Vera den Basten from Studio Lauter, who will support the team in conceiving it, along with Eliza Zschuschen, Head of the National Herbarium of Suriname, and Didi van Trijp. No final decision was made, but innovative and intriguing ideas emerged and will serve as the basis for the intervention.

Overall, the sunny spring days spent in Italy were highly fruitful, thanks to all the members of the Botanical Gardens Cluster and other external contributors, including Federica Bonacini from the Università Roma Tre in addition to those mentioned above.