Kew at Work Gallery

Waterlily Pond, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ca 1900

The waterlily pond, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ca 1900. The pond was one of Sir William Thiselton-Dyer's additions, heated by condensed steam from the local water supply, making it possible to raise half-hardy aquatic plants. Some of the waterlilies in this photograph were supplied by the French nurseryman Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac. One of the first growers to successfully hybridize waterlillies, Marliac is probably best known for his yellow-flowered cultivar Nymphaea Marliacea Chromatella, which he sent to Kew in 1887. He is also renowned for contributing many of the waterlilies in Monet's garden at Giverny

© RBG Kew

John Davenport Snowden and wife, Uganda 1916

John Davenport Snowden, botanical explorer and plant collector, with his wife, standing outside their tent at a camp near Kampala, Uganda, in 1916. Snowden began work in Uganda in 1911, when he became Assistant Agricultural Officer. He sent many specimens back to Kew. The red hot poker Kniphofia thompsonii var. snowdenii is named after him

© RBG KEW

636. The Volcanoes of Merapi and Marbaboe, Java, from the top of Boro Bodoer

The rich plain at their feet covered with morning mist; the tops of the Cocoanut groves alone showing above it, and indicating the position of the numerous native villages. In the foreground are some of the 400 life-size statues of Buddha, amidst their shattered dagobas, which adorn the wonderful pyramid and its seven steps or terraces. They contain the whole history of the holy man, illustrated in the finest bas-relief, and if stretched out would measure three miles in length. The building was commenced apparently in the fifth or sixth century, and may have been in progress 200 years before it was completed

© RBG KEW