Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image


Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
TypeNon-departmental public body
Location
Key people
Budget£65.6 million[1]
Employees1,100
Websitewww.kew.org

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff.[1] Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.

The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, and at Wakehurst, a National Trust property in Sussex which is home to the internationally important Millennium Seed Bank, whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries.[2] Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission, founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers.[3] In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum, was formed as a partnership between Kew and the Castle Howard Estate.[4]

In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst.[5] Its 326-acre (132 ha) site at Kew has 40 historically important buildings; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.[6] The collections at Kew and Wakehurst include over 27,000 taxa of living plants,[7] 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens[8] and over 2.4 billion seeds collected from nearly 40,000 species in the Millennium Seed Bank.[9]

  1. ^ a b Annual reports 2020.
  2. ^ "How we work". Millennium Seed Bank. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  3. ^ England, Forestry Commission. "History of Bedgebury National Pinetum". www.forestry.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 16 August 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  4. ^ "Background". The Yorkshire Arboretum. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  5. ^ "ALVA – Association of Leading Visitor Attractions". www.alva.org.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  6. ^ Guinness World Records 2011. Guinness World Records. 2010. pp. 69. ISBN 978-1-904994-57-2.
  7. ^ "Living Collections". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  8. ^ Paton, Alan; Willis, Kathy; Smith, Rhian (15 March 2018). "Launching the Science Collections Strategy 2018–2028". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  9. ^ "Seed Collection". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.

Previous Page Next Page