Kew Botanical Gardens

The Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew are located in the south-west of London. Kew Gardens were established in 1759 and are a complex of botanical gardens and greenhouses. With around 700 employees, this internationally recognized research center is visited by around 2 million tourists annually. Here is the world’s largest collection of living plants – 30,000 grow in gardens, in the herbarium there are 7 million samples of dried plants. There are 35 world heritage sites in the garden.

Kew has arboretum, collections of cacti, medicinal plants, rhododendrons, alpine plants, orchids and more. Of the many greenhouses located in Kew, the largest is the Temple House, built in the XIX century. On the territory of the garden there are Kew Palace, which is the smallest of the British royal palaces, built in the XVII century, the Japanese Mink House, a Chinese-style pagoda built in the XVIII century, the cottage of Queen Charlotte, presented to her for her wedding. The garden houses a library and archives, including more than half a million units of storage. There is also a museum with ethnobotanical collections, the Marianne North Gallery with her drawings and paintings and the Shirley Sherwood Gallery with samples of the work of masters of botanical illustration. Also in the gardens you can visit the risotron - a gallery with bronze statues, which are mounted liquid crystal screens, images on which allow you to observe the root system of trees.