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Palm House, Kew Gardens

Decimus Burton buildingsGrade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Richmond upon ThamesGreenhouses in the United KingdomRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Kew Gardens Palm House, London July 2009
Kew Gardens Palm House, London July 2009

The Palm House is a large palm house in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, that specialises in growing palms and other tropical and subtropical plants. It was completed in 1848. Many of its plants are endangered or extinct in the wild. Features include an upper walkway, taking the visitor into the branches of the larger plants. Kew also has the even larger "Temperate House", kept at lower temperatures. Initially built as status symbols in Victorian Britain, several examples of ornate glass and iron greenhouses, often but not always called "the Palm House", can still be found in botanical gardens and parks such as Liverpool's Sefton Park and Stanley Park, and in other countries. The Palm House was the first greenhouse to be built on this scale. It was also the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Palm House, Kew Gardens (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Palm House, Kew Gardens
Thames Path - northern Bank, London Isleworth (London Borough of Hounslow)

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N 51.479166666667 ° E -0.29277777777778 °
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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Thames Path - northern Bank
TW8 8HE London, Isleworth (London Borough of Hounslow)
England, United Kingdom
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kew.org

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Kew Gardens Palm House, London July 2009
Kew Gardens Palm House, London July 2009
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Kew Gardens
Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs over 1,100 staff and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, although it can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, consists of 132 hectares (330 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings, and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape. It is listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1845.

Temperate House, Kew Gardens
Temperate House, Kew Gardens

The Temperate House, opened in May 1863, is a Grade I-listed showhouse for the largest plants in Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Rectangular, with pitched roofs, its pillars support wrought-iron ribs. Decimus Burton and Irish engineer, Richard Turner, the designers, gave the House a mix of decorative motifs, finials, pediments, acanthus leaf capitals, Coade stone urns and statues. According to Greg Redwood, Kew's head of glasshouses, "The effect is similar to the contemporary iron pier pavilions of Eugenius Birch." Although construction began in 1860, it would not be completed until 1899. It was positioned to be the first feature visitors saw as they entered the gates with the anticipated coming of the first railway station at Kew expected to be at the end of the adjacent avenue. However, Kew Gardens rail station was built 500 yards to the north, leaving the glasshouse "somewhat stranded in the landscape". In 2011 Kew launched a £15m public appeal to address necessary repairs to the Temperate House. An early exercise in cast- and wrought-iron and glass construction, the building is structurally sound but the Victorians hid utilitarian features like drainpipes inside the stone columns. Water round the edge of the building led to rust on the iron to push against the masonry which was falling away. Decorative features made of wood were rotting. It last underwent a major restoration in the early 1980s. The building was restored during 2014–15 by Donald Insall Associates, based on their conservation management plan.There is a viewing gallery in the central section from which visitors are able to look down on that part of the collection. It was re-opened to the public in May 2018.

Cambridge Cottage
Cambridge Cottage

Cambridge Cottage is a former royal residence in Kew in London. It is located on the west side of Kew Green, very close to St Anne's Church; the rear of the house is in Kew Gardens, where it is known as the Duke's Garden. Historically it is associated with Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge and his son Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, from whom it takes its name. The connection of the House of Hanover with the area dates back to the acquisition of Richmond Lodge by the future George II from the attainted Jacobite Duke of Ormonde in the 1710s. His grandson George III occupied Kew Palace as his summer residence and his children partly grew up in the area. In 1806 he granted Cambridge Cottage to his seventh and youngest surviving son Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge while his brother Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland took over King's Cottage next door. Adolphus spent a number of years away from England as Viceroy in Hanover following its 1813 liberation from French occupation. He lived at Cambridge Cottage with his wife Princess Augusta, who continued to live there for many years after her husband's death in 1850. It later passed to their son George, Duke of Cambridge, a first cousin of Queen Victoria and long-standing Commander in Chief of the British Army. On his death in 1904 it was given to Kew Gardens by his cousin Edward VII. Subsequently it was used as a museum of forestry. Despite the building's name it is a not a cottage but a mansion. The building dates back to the early nineteenth century and features a portico entrance facing onto Kew Green. It has been a Grade II listed building since 1950.

Kew Herbarium
Kew Herbarium

The Kew Herbarium (herbarium code: K) is one of the world's largest and most historically significant herbaria, housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England. Established in the 1850s on the ground floor of Hunter House, it has grown to maintain approximately seven million preserved plant specimens, including 330,000 type specimens. The herbarium's collections, which include specimens dating back to 1700, represent about 95% of known vascular plant genera and 60% of described fungi, with specimens collected over 260 years of botanical exploration. The herbarium processes around 5,000 specimen loans annually and hosts approximately 3,000 visitor-days of research visits each year, supporting a wide range of botanical research. The herbarium's development has been closely tied to British botanical exploration and colonial expansion, with contributions from influential directors like Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and major acquisitions including the Gay Herbarium. Research at the herbarium has contributed to botanical taxonomy, with publications such as the Index Kewensis, initiated with funding from Charles Darwin in 1882, and the Kew Record. The facility has undergone several major expansions since its first purpose-built wing was constructed in 1877, with Victorian architecture that includes spiral staircases, iron columns, and vast handcrafted wooden cupboards. In 2022, the herbarium initiated a £29 million digitisation project to produce high-resolution images of its collection, with a target completion date of 2026. The herbarium is a resource for botanical research in taxonomy, conservation, ecology, and climate science. Its specimens offer data that aid in tracking environmental changes, studying plant diseases, and identifying new species, as demonstrated by the 2022 discovery of Victoria boliviana, the world's largest water lily species, which had remained unrecognised in the collection for almost two centuries. The herbarium's future is currently subject to debate, with controversial plans announced in 2023 to relocate the collection to Thames Valley Science Park, prompting discussion about the balance between preservation needs, research accessibility, and maintaining the historic connection between the herbarium and Kew's living collections.