It's always great to see our PhD placement students share their work. @alyssamyers.bsky.social has written a fascinating blog post about her placement and her findings relating to Kew Gardens' royal history. Read more below ⬇️ #EnvironmentalHumanities
#Archives
Happy #InternationalArchivesDay! To celebrate, the team wanted to share some favourites from the collections, covering Eleanor Armitage's notebooks, William Burchell's colour charts, and John Fraser's poetry. The collections are always full of surprises.
#IAD2026 #KewLA
The catalogue for the current exhibition in the Gardens - 'Henry Moore: Monumental Nature' has some excellent contributions by Kew staff including our very own Illustrations Curator - Lynn Parker, whose chapter on 'Drawing on nature' features items from the Library and Archives. #KewLA #HenryMoore
The Archives team have been running a series of two-part workshops for participants to engage with collections being catalogued for the #ArchivesRevealed project. Participants have produced artistic responses to collections and discussions with help from arts facilitator Dr Anushka Tay. /1
#KewLA
We look forward to working with participants later this month to co-curate our free project exhibition, which will open in the Reading Room in the Herbarium & Library building on Kew Green later this year. /2
#KewLA #Archives #Exhibition
Celebrating our wonderful Library and Archive volunteers this week who are generous in sharing their expertise and offer invaluable help with our collections. Here one of our volunteers handles some of the South Asian illustrations. #VolunteersWeek #KewLA
Restoration of Kew's Palm House is likely to begin in 2027. This image of the Palm House interior, from the Library and Archives, was published on this day in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1886. Renovation will ensure that this structure and its important plants can be enjoyed for generations to come.
This stunning illustration of Pajanelia longifolia, from Kew's Library and Archives, was painted around 1820 by the artist Vishnupersaud. You can see it on show at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as part of 'In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World' until 16 August 2026. #KewLA
Our new Reading Room display ‘Female Figures and Fungi: A Foray into the Mycological Past’ opens today! Come and learn more about the lives and careers of pioneering women in fungi, with many materials on display for the first time. Accessible from 10am-4pm Tuesday to Thursday until 26 August.
The Archives Graduate Trainee recently completed their cataloguing project, working on the papers of William Philip Hiern. Amongst his research papers on Central African plants, they discovered notes which also included a pressed plant specimen! #KewLA
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
Fiona Ainsworth
New blog up on the Places, Plants and People Archive Network website, featuring lots of beautiful images of Kew Gardens! By @alyssamyers.bsky.social
collections.reading.ac.uk/places-plant...
In this blog, Alyssa Myers reflects on her PhD placement with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Historic Royal Palaces to create a finding aid of Kew’s pre-public era history.
