Members' Lectures
Image: Home of Charles Darwin, Down House

Chairman's Lecture: Charles Darwin's living laboratory at Down House

In 1859, while living at Down House in Kent, Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection in his book On the Origin of Species. The garden at Down House was Darwin’s ‘living laboratory’, where he conducted hundreds of experiments on the natural world. In her lecture on 7 February, Emily Parker, landscape advisor, took us behind the scenes of the project to reveal more about those experiments and the role they played in informing his groundbreaking theories.

You can watch the lecture again and also get answers from Emily to some of the questions we didn't get to on the night.

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