Kew Gardens
Kew's pagoda once wore 80 gilded dragons, and its seedlings helped reshape the economies of three continents. Here's the botanical powerhouse hiding beside the Thames.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Kew, south-west London, beside the Thames
- Founded
- 1759, by Princess Augusta, mother of George III
- Size
- About 130 hectares (330 acres)
- Heritage status
- UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003
- Great Pagoda
- 10 storeys, around 50 metres tall, designed by Sir William Chambers in 1762
- Palm House
- Built 1844–1848 by Decimus Burton and Richard Turner
- Temperate House
- Largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world, reopened in 2018 after a five-year restoration
- Oldest resident
- A cycad collected in South Africa in 1775, said to be the world's oldest potted plant
The world's oldest potted plant is still on the payroll
In the Palm House stands a cycad that has lived at Kew since the 1770s. It was collected in South Africa by Francis Masson, Kew's first official plant hunter, and it has outlasted every monarch since George III. That tells you what Kew is really about. It looks like a park, but it has always been a research institution that happens to be beautiful.
A princess, a king and a plant-hunting superstar
Kew began in 1759, when Princess Augusta, mother of George III, set aside nine acres for a botanic garden. William Aiton was the head gardener and Sir William Chambers dotted the grounds with follies. Then came Sir Joseph Banks, who had sailed round the world with Captain Cook. From 1773 he effectively ran Kew and sent collectors to every corner of the globe. Seeds and cuttings flowed back, and Kew became the clearing house for the British Empire's plants. That power had consequences. In 1876 Henry Wickham shipped Brazilian rubber seeds to Kew. The seedlings that germinated there were sent on to Ceylon and Singapore, and they seeded plantations that transformed those economies and the global rubber trade.
Glass and iron that looks like an upturned ship
The Palm House, built between 1844 and 1848, was designed by architect Decimus Burton and ironmaster Richard Turner. Its curved glass-and-wrought-iron frame is often compared to the hull of a great ship turned upside down. It was a daring piece of Victorian engineering, built to keep tropical palms alive through London winters. The Temperate House, begun in the 1860s, is the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse anywhere. Its restoration finished in 2018 and put the vast collection of plants back under glass. The Waterlily House was built in 1852 to show off the Amazonian giant waterlily, whose leaves can bear the weight of a small child.
The dragons that vanished, and the pagoda that stayed
The Great Pagoda of 1762 was one of Chambers's showpieces, and it originally had 80 dragons on its roofs. They had gone by the 1780s, and a popular story says they were sold to pay the Prince Regent's debts. It's a good tale, but don't take it as gospel. In 2018 a restoration put 80 new dragons back in place, and the pagoda finally looks the way Chambers intended. The oddest building is Kew Palace, a red-brick Dutch-style house from 1631 that was once a retreat for George III and his family. It is among the smallest of the royal palaces.
Fire, storm and a suffragette arson
Kew has had some dramatic moments. In 1913 suffragettes burned down the Refreshment Pavilion, one of the militant campaign's more unusual targets. The Great Storm of October 1987 brought down hundreds of trees at Kew, around 700 by most counts, and changed the look of the landscape. The replanting that followed shaped much of what visitors walk through today.
What to look out for when you go
Climb the Treetop Walkway, which takes you about 18 metres up into a canopy of lime, sweet chestnut and oak. The view across the gardens is excellent. Visit the Marianne North Gallery, where a Victorian traveller's 832 paintings of plants from around the world cover the walls from floor to ceiling. She paid for the gallery herself and it opened in 1882. Keep an eye on what's in bloom in the glasshouses. Kew is one of the places where a titan arum, the so-called corpse flower, has flowered in Britain, and when one does it makes news. Behind the scenes, Kew's science carries on. The herbarium holds millions of pressed specimens, and Kew's sister garden at Wakehurst in Sussex houses the Millennium Seed Bank, a vault for seeds from around the world.
Notable people
- Princess Augusta
- George III
- Sir William Chambers
- William Aiton
- Sir Joseph Banks
- Francis Masson
- Decimus Burton
- Richard Turner
- Sir William Hooker
- Sir Joseph Hooker
- Henry Wickham
- Marianne North
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