A recreation of Darwin's lawn experiment, in the garden at Down House

Down House, built in the early 18th century, was home to Darwin for 40 years until his death in 1882. After moving to the house in 1842, Darwin and his wife, Emma, remodelled the building and its extensive gardens many times. The garden was integral to family life. It provided a place of play and relaxation, a kitchen garden to grow food, and perhaps most famously a place for Darwin to experiment and test his scientific theories. It was here that Darwin developed his theory of evolution by natural selection and wrote his ground breaking work ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859).

Today you can see many of Darwin's experiments recreated in the garden and greenhouse at Down, such as his lawn plot experiment (pictured here). This investigated the number of different species that could be found living in a small area and how they competed for light and space.