Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London, founded in 1759. It covers 132 hectares and holds the largest and most diverse botanical collections in the world. The site includes four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures. It is a World Heritage Site and one of London’s top tourist attractions. The gardens began as an exotic garden at Kew Park, created by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury. Later, Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, enlarged the garden, and William Chambers built the Great Pagoda in 1761. The gardens are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important research and education institution. It employs over 1,100 staff and houses over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens in its herbarium. The library holds more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection includes over 175,000 prints and drawings. Kew Gardens has its own police force, the Kew Constabulary, which has operated since 1845. The gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden in 1840, largely due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president, William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Visitors walk along a 200-metre canopy walkway that rises 18 metres above the ground. The Lake Crossing bridge, made of granite and bronze, sweeps over the water in a double curve. The Hive, a 17-metre aluminium sculpture, offers a multi-sensory experience about bees in a wildflower meadow. Five historic trees, known as the ‘Five Lions’, survive from 1762. The Palm House, built between 1844 and 1848, was the first large-scale use of wrought iron in a glasshouse. The Temperate House, twice the size of the Palm House, is the largest Victorian glasshouse still standing.