Kew at Work Gallery
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Featured Kew at Work Image
Gardening equipment, RBG Kew
Wheelbarrow and gardening equipment, RBG Kew
© RBG KEW
Equipment, Gardening, Horticulture, No People, Rbg Kew, Tools, Wheelbarrow
Featured Kew at Work Image
Kew gardener with wheelbarrow
Kew gardener with wheelbarrow. Verbena bonariensis in the foreground, the Orangery building in the background, RBG Kew
© RBG KEW
Bonariensis, Gardener, Horticulture, Methods, Orangery, Rbg Kew, Staff, Verbena, Wheelbarrow
Featured Kew at Work Image
Robert Fortune
Robert Fortune (1812-1880) born in Berwickshire, Scotland, was a botanist and plant-hunter best known for smuggling tea plants out of China at the behest of the East India Company. Following the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, Fortune was awarded the position of the Society's Collector in China, visiting the region on four occasions, remaining there for two or three years each time. In 1846, he published his journals as 'Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China'. In 1848, he was tasked by the East India Company with collecting tea plants to establish plantations in India, breaking the Chinese monopoly. Disguising himself as a Chinese merchant, he travelled to the remote Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangsu provinces, regions rarely explored by Westerners, beyond the permissible day's journey from the agreed European treaty ports. The ruling Chinese government had outlawed the purchase of tea plants, but Fortune was able to coordinate the shipment of more than 20, 000 plants and seedlings, in Wardian cases, to the Himalayas, effectively initiating the tea industry in India
© RBG KEW
