While I have explored quite a number of the noteworthy natural history institutions in Great Britain, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is not one for which I can claim in-person experience just yet. Not that I haven’t been interested in visiting it, mind you – it’s simply my visits to the U.K. generally involve me arriving at Heathrow and from there heading straight into the countryside of Berkshire and points beyond. However after having now begun reading Dr. Kate Teltscher‘s Palace of Palms; Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew, recently published by Picador, my interest in seeing it for myself has increased fifty fold.
Centering its narrative around the creation of the garden’s iconic Palm House, Dr. Teltscher’s fascinating book recounts the monumental work undertaken by such remarkable and noteworthy figures as the garden’s first director Sir William Hooker (father of the also noteworthy botanist and friend-of-Darwin Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker), its designer Richard Turner, and curator John Smith to save the garden from destruction and provide the early shape and scope of the world-famous institution it has become today. Truly, this is a work of which all interested in the history of natural history and the history of botany should immediately take note.
