Abstract
The Botanic Garden of Dunedin, New Zealand, is a leisure environment that entangles human and nonhuman organisms. In particular, it is a place in which animal and plant species have coexisted since its inception in 1863. This paper examines the social conscience surrounding the development of this botanic garden in Colonial New Zealand. It looks beyond the human to produce an account concerned with appreciating the garden’s multispecies nature based within the context of leisure. In doing so, it illuminates how vegetation was suffocated by dominant speciesism and anthropocentrism to provide the foundations of a platform from which humans can coexist better with the nonhuman Other now and tomorrow. As such, the paper contributes to the development of a more-than-human scholarship in leisure as part of the posthuman turn away from modernist humanism. However, the paper also addresses concerning trends within this research strand, namely animal bias. In discussing the position of plant life within the history of the botanic garden, the paper demonstrates why such an exclusive focus is concerning for a scholarship that should be inclusive of all species and individuals.