In 1788 two Kew gardeners sailed to Tahiti aboard HMS Bounty, collected a thousand breadfruit plants, and were most of the way to Jamaica when the crew mutinied. That is a Kew story, and it is not even the strangest one.
The place began as a nine-acre garden belonging to a princess and turned into an institution that has sent people around the world for plants, been set on fire by suffragettes, and now banks seeds against the end of things. The glasshouses you walk through were built as working equipment, not as attractions, which is why they feel like machinery.
History
The quick answers to the questions most people ask about Kew’s past.
1759. Princess Augusta, mother of the future George III, laid out a nine-acre botanic garden within the pleasure grounds at Kew. Nine acres is roughly the size of the Palm House lawn today.
Her son later joined the Richmond and Kew estates together in 1802, which gave the site the shape it still has.
1759
Princess Augusta founds a nine-acre botanic garden in the grounds at Kew.
1762
William Chambers builds the Great Pagoda.
1768
Joseph Banks sends seeds back from Cook’s South Seas voyage and becomes Kew’s first unofficial director on his return.
1772
Francis Masson, Kew’s first plant collector, sails for South Africa and returns with thousands of plants.
1773
Capability Brown carves out the Hollow Walk, now the Rhododendron Dell.
1788
HMS Bounty sails for Tahiti with two Kew gardeners aboard and a thousand breadfruit plants. The crew mutinies en route to Jamaica.
1802
George III unites the Richmond and Kew estates.
1840
Kew transfers from the Crown to the government, Sir William Hooker becomes director, and the Gardens open to the public.
1841
Joseph Hooker brings plants back from the Falklands in glazed Wardian cases, a new way of keeping them alive at sea.
1848
The Palm House is completed.
1852
The Herbarium is built. After five extensions it now holds over seven million specimens.
1863
The Temperate House opens, finished in 1899.
1882
The Marianne North Gallery opens.
1889
A titan arum flowers at Kew, the first time it had bloomed anywhere outside Sumatra.
1896
Women are employed as gardeners at Kew for the first time.
1913
Suffragettes attack a glasshouse and burn down the tea pavilion. Two are jailed.
1939
Vegetables and medicinal plants are grown at Kew for the war effort.
1987
The Princess of Wales Conservatory opens.
2003
Kew is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
2008
The Treetop Walkway and the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art open.
2018
The Temperate House reopens after five years of restoration, and the Great Pagoda reopens with eighty restored dragons.
Joseph Banks, more than anyone. He sent seeds back to Kew while sailing with Captain Cook to the South Seas in 1768, and on his return became its first unofficial director. Under him Kew started doing the thing it has done ever since, which is sending people a very long way to find plants and bring them home alive.
Francis Masson was the first of them, dispatched to South Africa in 1772, returning with thousands of specimens. The two gardeners on the Bounty were following the same instruction sixteen years later.
In 1840 Kew passed from the Crown to the government and Sir William Hooker was appointed director. The same year, it opened to the public.
That handover is the moment Kew became a national scientific institution rather than a very good private garden, and everything visitors recognise today was built afterwards. The Palm House went up in 1848, the Herbarium in 1852, the Temperate House from 1863.
Kew by the numbers
1759
9 acres
7 million
1,000
1848
2003
Key Historical Themes
The Bounty was a Kew expedition
The most famous mutiny in British naval history happened on a plant-collecting voyage. The Bounty sailed in 1788 to bring breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica as a cheap food crop, carrying two Kew gardeners to keep the plants alive on the way. A thousand plants were collected. The crew mutinied before they arrived.
It is worth holding in mind while looking at the glasshouses. Kew’s collection was assembled by people on ships, over years, at genuine risk, and a fair number of the plants did not make it.
Suffragettes burned down the tea pavilion
In February 1913 suffragettes attacked one of the glasshouses at Kew, smashing the glass. Weeks later the tea pavilion was burned to the ground. Two women were jailed for it.
Kew was targeted precisely because it was a national institution and a place the establishment cared about, which tells you something about its standing at the time.
Wardian cases changed what could be collected
Before the 1840s, most plants died at sea. The Wardian case, a sealed glazed box, meant they arrived alive, and Joseph Hooker used them to bring specimens back from the Falklands in 1841.
It sounds like a footnote and it is not. Half of what grows at Kew is there because somebody worked out how to keep a plant alive on a boat.
The corpse flower, 1889
A titan arum flowered at Kew in 1889, the first time the species had bloomed outside Sumatra. It is the largest unbranched flower in the world and it smells, accurately, of rotting meat.
Kew still grows them, and a flowering still draws a queue, which is a strange thing to be true of a plant that smells like that.
Women were not employed here until 1896
Kew took on its first women gardeners in 1896. They were reportedly required to wear the same clothing as the men to avoid drawing attention, which is the sort of detail that says more than the date does.
Visiting Kew Today
The research side never stopped. The Herbarium holds over seven million specimens and takes in tens of thousands more each year. The Millennium Seed Bank, funded from 1997, banks seeds against extinction and passed its billionth in 2007.
Which is the thing to carry round with you. The Palm House is beautiful and it is also a working piece of Victorian equipment belonging to an organisation that is still doing the job it was built for.
Head back to the Kew Gardens guide for what to see, when to go and how to get there.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Kew Gardens founded?
1759, when Princess Augusta established a nine-acre botanic garden in the grounds at Kew. It has been open to the public since 1840.
Who founded Kew Gardens?
Princess Augusta, mother of George III. Joseph Banks shaped what it became, serving as its first unofficial director from 1768.
How old is the Palm House?
It was completed in 1848, eight years after Kew opened to the public. The Temperate House opened later, from 1863, and was finished in 1899.
Why is Kew Gardens a World Heritage Site?
It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2003, recognised for its landscape, its architecture and its collections together rather than for any single building.
Is Kew Gardens a royal garden?
It began as one and stopped being one in 1840, when it passed from the Crown to the government. Kew Palace inside the Gardens is still run by Historic Royal Palaces.