Kew Gardens

a popular name for the royal botanical gardens and arboretum situated at Kew, on the left bank of the Thames, a few miles above London. This is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world and is perhaps the most celebrated. It occupies the former private gardens and grounds of a royal residence. The gardens proper occupy about seventy-five acres, with 270 acres of wood, shrubbery, and lawn. An old royal deer park--a noble extent of lawn and fine trees--lies adjacent, making a total of about 650 acres. The grounds were planned largely by a Mr. William Aiton, a Scottish gardener, who enjoyed the friendship of Sir Joseph Banks, the great naturalist. The garden got its start from the collections brought to London by a number of navigators, not the least of whom was Captain Joseph Cook with whom Sir Joseph Banks sailed as a naturalist. A great number of new plants were classified and named by Banks and Aiton, the latter of whom in 1789 published a three-volume catalogue of the Kew Gardens, enumerating 5,600 plants.

A description of the gardens begins usually with the Palm House, an immense building, in the construction of which 45,000 square feet of glass and 19,000 feet of hot-water piping were used. Some sixty species of palms from a few inches to 100 feet in height are arranged with artistic effect, probably the finest single collection of palms in the world. The building contains also a great number of other tropical plants, as the cocoanut, the betel nut, the vegetable ivory, banana, plantain, the cinnamon tree, bamboo, banyan, fig, mahogany, pawpaw, cocoa, sensitive plant, sugar-cane, tamarind, coffee shrub, and other interesting plants too numerous to mention. The Temperate Building is given over to plants from the temperate climes of all the grand divisions. We cannot take space to describe the contents of the buildings in detail, but their names are suggestive, as Tropical House; Tropical Aquarium; Water Lily House; Hardy Medicinal Plants; Water Plants; Rock Garden; Economic House, given over to spices and all sorts of plants with economic value; Begonia House; Orchid Houses; Fern Houses; The Herbarium; and the Library. One of the most remarkable buildings is called Miss North's Gallery, in which several thousand paintings executed from nature by Miss Marianne North, and representing scenes in many quarters of the globe are on exhibition. The visitor is simply bewildered by wall after wall covered with exquisite water colors representing the most beautiful flowers.

The extensive grounds are laid out with taste in ferneries, rock gardens, hedges, walks, flower beds, little ponds, and, best of all, clusters of magnificent forest trees raised from the seed or from young saplings brought home in English ships, some of them centuries ago, from all quarters of the globe. The greatest pains have been taken to give each tree the shelter, soil, and care it demands. The giant redwood and sequoia of California are growing here. The Douglas fir of the Pacific coast has a place. Trees which are common to Americans, but which would otherwise be unknown to the British, have been planted and tended with great care. American oaks, maples, hickories, ashes, poplars, magnolias, chestnuts, walnuts, Kentucky coffee trees, and the like, uphold the reputation of American forests. Our wild grape vines, the Virginia creeper, every curious and common plant, and hundreds of our wild flowers, including roses, lilies, honeysuckles, verbenas, nettles, callas, azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, and many others, are represented. The same is true of other countries. South American trees, plants, and flowers are there. The plants of the African desert and tropical forest have not been forgotten. Australia, India, China, and Japan have contributed. It would seem as though British naturalists had hunted every nook of the world where the British flag is known for specimens of forest, prairie, and aquatic plant life. There are a number of noted botanical gardens, but it is safe to say that one could acquire a better knowledge of the earth's vegetation in the forests, gardens, ponds, greenhouses, hothouses, and herbaria of Kew than at any other one place. The gardens are maintained at the expense of the government and are open to the public.

See Botanical Gardens; Shaw'S Gardens; Java; Botany