In this nature-writing workshop, Craig Jordan-Baker will use the fantastic settings of the Royal Pavilion Gardens to stimulate participants to think about the ideas of the ‘exotic’, as well as the more modest concept of the ‘weed’. Participant writers will be challenged not only to be reflexive about the categories we use, but to see the plants around us as the latest in the long and complex story of human ecology. About Origin Stories: Retold: In this talk and workshop series, writers and academics Drs Hitchman and Jordan-Baker (University of Brighton) will explore stories of origin: how they get told, what they mean and how we might retell them. Focussing on early human origins and the ecology of ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ species, these events will look at both the science and the storytelling behind origins.