Kew Gardens

He is a prominent botanist and ecologist who has worked at the New York Botanical Garden and spent much of his time undertaking fieldwork in the Amazon rainforest.

has been the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and also involved in the Eden Project and in the Nature in Art Trust.

Welcome Sir Gillian.

Thank you.

And a lot of them are now growing throughout the land.

They're growing at Wisley, they're growing at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew for my collections, and they're growing at the World Garden.

And so having a rough idea of where you want to go before you go always helps.

Having a grant gives you real kudos.

And even online now, people still, still, it's so important for me to know the origins of where these plants are from.

You can improve your husbandry by growing the plant if you know the conditions in the wild that it comes from, the soil, the heat, the cold.

that the altitude the humidity the light the shade can really improve your husbandry back home for a plant that perhaps you'd otherwise kill all the time because you don't know where it's from and how it grows in the wild but it just expands your knowledge obviously you might say you can see a type of red hot poker you've got in the garden such as nifofia linarifolia it's in flower now with lovely linear narrow leaves in full flower you know he introduced that you know who brought that back in the 1750s the first professional plant hunter in 1770 was a chap called francis masson from aberdeen in scotland that Joseph Banks, founding Kew Gardens to the Botanical Institute that it is known today, sent abroad to South Africa to bring back these plants.

As you say, risking life and limb, sometimes not coming back on these expeditions, often years in total.

Have a cup of tea, absolutely, absolutely.

So other places, obviously, that are going to be better when it's dry, it's like Kew Gardens.

Yeah.

Hampton Court for the gardens they're just you know if you're going to be out and about walking in gardens you really if it's pouring down with rain it's not the best place to go yeah and the Tower of London as well is probably going to it's probably a surprise if I'm going to say this that I would not head to the Tower of London if it's raining or very heavy rain because actually a lot of your visit is spent outside walking between the towers along the walls and now it's not going to be ruined if there's a shower but if it's a really heavy day with rain I wouldn't I would probably try and move it

From the Australian Orchid Review, Volume 69, Number 4.

From the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.

From the Missouri Botanical Garden.

From the IUCN.

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners' Question Time with me, Peter Gibbs.

This week we're at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 32 hectares of the world's most extensive and diverse living plant and fungi collections on the banks of the Thames in southwest London.

Kew's story dates back to 1759 when Princess Augusta established a botanic garden in the grounds of Kew Palace, and over the next two and a half centuries it grew into a garden of global scientific importance.

At its heart stands the Palm House, Decimus Burton and Richard Turner's great curved glasshouse of iron and glass completed in 1848.

We've been involved with, um, green prescriptions, um, with charities supporting, you know, adults with various challenges.

And between us, we've, we've worked at, uh, National Trust locations, RSPB sites, um, Kew Gardens, even ran a session at RSH- um, RHS Wisley.

And, uh, yeah, and I had the opportunity to be in a program with the Reverend Kate Bottley, um, briefly.

So just as a, a guide, I wasn't the focus of it.

And that's, that's one of the wonderful things, um, about it.

Um, yeah, that feeling of calm.

I know when I did a few of the ones at Kew Gardens, so that was a very public session.

Most people didn't come with somebody they knew, and I w- to be honest, I was a bit skeptical about how much they would get from it, i- in a botanical garden.

Welcome to Impact Vector London, where today we're diving into the heart of Kew Gardens, exploring changes to London bus routes and uncovering a community story in Hackney.

First up, Kew Gardens has launched a one million pound fundraising appeal to save its iconic Palm House.

This Victorian glasshouse, a staple since eighteen forty-eight, is at risk without urgent renovation.

The Palm House is not just a structure, it's a living rainforest, home to some of the world's rarest plants.

Visitors can wander through its lush interior, experiencing a rainforest environment in the heart of London.

The glasshouse is home to an extraordinary collection of plants, some of which are rare and endangered.

This makes the Palm House not only a vital part of Kew Gardens, but also a crucial player in global plant conservation efforts.

With approximately half of the necessary funds already secured through philanthropists and grants, Kew Gardens is reaching out to the public to help bridge the gap.