Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens got its start when Dorothy Bennett (inheritor of the Kew Park estate), daughter of Sir Richard Bennett (owner of the Kew Park estate), married Sir Henry Capel during the later half of the 17th century. It was the Capel family who developed the first famous gardens in Kew Park, which would later become known as Kew Gardens.

In 1731, Frederick, Prince of Wales, (King George II's son), leased the Kew Farm on which the Capel's lived. In 1736, he married Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha and together initiated a series of dramatic changes to the Kew estate.

The gardens, according to Frederick's plan, was to be a place of trees, exotics, an aqueduct, and an area displaying busts of philosophers. Construction on making that vision a reality was under way until Frederick's death in 1751. After Frederick's death, Princess Augusta took charge, and, with the help of the Earl of Bute, became, in effect, the founder of the botanical gardens at Kew.

Their idea was to create a place that contained all the plants known on Earth and to be formal yet naturalistic in design with lakes, great lawns, formal flower gardens, exotics, glasshouses, buildings, and animals. With the increase in colonial and scientific exploration, seeds and plants were sent back to the gardens from all over the world, which thus increased its diversity and size.

After serving as a status symbol (royal garden) for the wealthy, the purpose of Kew Gardens changed dramatically under the influence of Sir Joseph Banks. Alongside King George III, who inherited the Gardens from his mother Princess Augusta, Banks was instrumental in changing the direction of Kew from the simple collecting and showing of exotics to serious scientific and economic botanical purposes. He went on several collecting expeditions in which he collected considerable anthropological, scientific and botanical material. George III and Sir Joseph Banks' desire to develop economic uses for exotic and native plants set the course for the Gardens' development. Over the following years, Banks instigated collecting campaigns from such areas as South Africa, India, Abyssinia, China and Australia, which ultimately caused the Gardens to be known internationally as a place of plant collection. Through Banks, Kew Gardens went from a simple collecting house for plants to the the British center for economic botany.



In 1841, William Hooker became the first official director of Kew Gardens, and established Kew as the world's leading botanic garden, with Hooker's introduction of the Herbarium securing this high achievement. Later on, Hooker also created museums throughout the Garden to demonstrate the importance of plants to mankind.

William's son, Joseph, who took on directorship after his father, was instrumental in developing the Malaysian and Indian rubber economies and the introduction of Liberian coffee to Sri Lanka, which allowed economic botany to become Kew's dominant activity. He also got many grants and funds to research the effects of blight, insect ravages and disease of plants.

While Kew has changed directors multiple times and has been expanded, remodeled, and added on to since 1841, Kew Gardens today mainly serves as a place of conservation. This ethic developed during the period of 1945 to today. Directors and workers of Kew work to preserve global diversity by identifying and conserving threatened plant species and ecosystems, remaining especially active in the tropical regions where diversity is highest and threats are imminent. They also are pioneering techniques such as micropropagation to ensure the survival of the world's rarest plants, as well as educating visitors about the importance of plants and plant conservation.

The Palm House, completed in 1848, contains plants from all over the world. Such places are South Africa, Venezuela, Mexico, Madagascar, and the Americas. It contains a wide variety of plants from all over to help conserve and restore plant populations for the future, and also to aid populations to which plants are local, with the hope of introducing rare species back into the wild. Workers of the Palm House are also working to promote smaller-scale, more environmentally friendly ways of growing plants.

The Temperate House, completed in 1898, contains plants from temperate habitats as varied as rainforest, mountain, oceanic island, and savannah. More specifically, the Temperate House contains plants such as Tea from China, Eucalyptus from Australia, Birds of Paradise plants from South Africa, Chilean Wire Palm, the largest Indian plant, and Encephalartos woodii, the rarest fuchsias from New Zealand.

Kew Palace, previously known as the Dutch House, is the earliest surviving building in the Gardens, built around 1631. From about 1728 to to 1898, this beautiful place was used as a royal residence to house several important figures such as King George III who, with his family (Queen Charlotte and their daughters), lived in the palace between 1801 and 1818. Here, the King was kept from the public eye when he was seriously ill. Today, the palace serves as a museum, displaying various artifacts from royal families that have lived there in the past. The palace is an architectural gem, with its bright reddish-orange brick, its plethora of windows, and the magnificent rounded gables atop the roof. I would have liked to go into the palace and explore, but it was about three pounds to enter. Being the poor college student I am, the pictures I took will have to suffice.