Images Dated 2015

Eleanor Morland, Gertude Cope and Alice Hutchings, Kew gardeners, 1898

Eleanor Morland, Gertude Cope and Alice Hutchings, Kew gardeners, pictured in 1898, at RBG Kew. By 1902 all the women gardeners had left to take up horticultural posts elsewhere and it was not until World War I that female gardeners were employed at Kew again. Female gardeners wore brown bloomers, woollen stockings, waistcoats and caps, to discourage "sweethearting" with male colleagues

© RBG KEW

The Kew Gardens Question

The Kew Gardens Question. This political cartoon was published in 1878 as part of the ongoing debate as to whether the public should be allowed into the gardens in the mornings, before 1pm. Officially, only botanist and botanical artists were allowed morning access, with the Director's permission. The Kew Gardens Public Rights Defence Association was set up and successfully campaigned against this. The author of the article accompanying this cartoon smuggled himself into a morning session at the Gardens and claimed that those eminent botanists inside were mostly fast asleep in garden chairs and other gentlemen were "engaged in testing the effects of cigar smoke on open-air evergreens."

© RBG KEW

The Rhododendron Dell, Kew Gardens

19th century photograph of The Rhododendron Dell, Kew Gardens. Originally Capability Brown's "Hollow Walk" it was created in 1773 and planted with rhododendrons in 1850. In 1911 Ernest Wilson's rhododendrons were also added. Today, the dell is the only surviving piece of Capability Brown's landscaping of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

© RBG KEW