Press Release

Diarmuid Gavin Designs Garden to Celebrate Kew’s 250th Anniversary

Garden designer and television personality Diarmuid Gavin is creating a garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) as part of the prestigious botanical institution's 250th anniversary celebrations in 2009. It will welcome and delight visitors coming through the Main Gate.

Gavin's garden is just one of the fabulous horticultural highlights planned for a year long programme of events and activities that will celebrate RGB Kew's pivotal role as a world-leader in plant science and conservation, now and for the next 250 years.

Visitors will enjoy a dramatic Tropical Extravaganza, designed by Kew's horticultural staff. It will feature orchids and insectivorous plants, including pitcher plants Nepenthes and Sarracenia, and be set inside the Princess of Wales conservatory. This beautiful glasshouse will be brimming with exotic plants such as Anthuriums and Bromeliads, a truly tropical start to 2009! The display will also celebrate one of Britain's greatest botanists, Charles Darwin. As well as 2009 being RBG Kew's 250th anniversary, it is also the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th of the publication of On the Origin of Species. RBG Kew's Herbarium is home to specimens collected by Darwin during his voyage on HMS Beagle and Joseph Dalton Hooker, RBG Kew's Director from 1865 to 1885, provided Darwin with the critical feedback he needed in his writings about natural selection.

However, it is not only exotic flora that will take centre stage in the Gardens in 2009. UK native flowers will be celebrated in the Main Gate area; with a display including our magical native orchids and other wildflowers such as the reintroduction of a Thames Valley native – wild clary (Salvia verbenacea).  It will highlight to visitors the importance of plant conservation on our own door step and will demonstrate the beauty of our native flora.  The native orchids will be grown in a similar habitat to that of the wild and will be the start of an exciting native orchid trail project for the future.

Summer and Autumn floral spectaculars will also add to the riot of celebratory colour in the Gardens throughout 2009.

Kew's much-loved Spring celebration – the biggest display of seasonal Spring colour in the country – will be back in Kew's landmark birthday year. It will feature a spectacular crocus carpet, delightful daffodils and snowdrops nestling in woodland.

An exhibition about the conservation ‘Role of Botanic Gardens' around the world will be in the Nash Conservatory. The exhibition will feature Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, one of the world's most ambitious plant conservation projects. In RBG, Kew's 250th anniversary year the Millennium Seed Bank Project will be gearing up to celebrate a significant milestone of its own – smashing its target of collecting and banking seeds from 10 per cent of the world's most vulnerable wild flowering plants species by 2010.

Family activities during the Spring, Summer and Autumn holidays will feature in the celebratory calendar of events, so even younger members of the family can join in RBG, Kew's birthday celebrations.

Plans are also underway for the newly opened The Shirley Sherwood Gallery to mark RBG Kew's anniversary with an exhibition looking at the role of botanical art in the future, as well as what it tells us about things learnt or lost, including species due to extinction, in the past.

Dave Yard, project manager for Kew said, “In our 250th year we will be pulling out all the stops to make the Gardens look even more spectacular than it usually does and to use the opportunity to tell the public about the glorious history of Kew and the important contribution that we are making towards plant conservation.

“Many millions of visitors from around the globe have enjoyed the Gardens to date and 2009 is going to be a bumper year.”

Wakehurst Place, home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, will also be marking the anniversary. Set in the Sussex countryside it is a glorious place to visit throughout the year.

Ends

Further Information

There are a wealth of collections held at Kew that offer an opportunity to explore some of the lesser known aspects of RBG Kew's rich history and heritage and its present day role.

Members of the media interested in a behind-the-scenes look at RBG Kew should contact Catherine Owen, Bronwyn Friedlander or Bryony Phillips, RBG Kew press office, telephone 020 8332 5607, e-mail pr@kew.org.

RBG Kew's collections include:

The Illustrations, Library and Archives Collections

The collections of letters, books, maps, journals, manuscripts, photographs, botanical art and illustrations in the Library and Archives at RBG Kew are one of the premier sources for botanical information in the world.

http://www.kew.org/library/about.html#colls

Economic Botany Collection

The Economic Botany Collection is a rich collection of more than over 83,000 plant based artefacts from around the world that illustrate the significant role plants have played in human culture and development. Medicines, clothing, weapons, jewellery, paper and musical instruments are just some of the items that feature.

http://www.kew.org/collections/ecbot/

The Preserved Collections in the Herbarium is made up of more than seven million plant specimens from around the world. In addition to dried and pressed plants it also includes a fleshy flowers and fruits Spirit Collection – 70,000 specimens, preserved in fluid and stored in glass jars – and one of the most important reference collections of fungi in the world. From Antarctica to the tropics, more than 800,000 fungi from every part of the globe are represented in the Mycological Collection.

The Herbarium is also home to the personal collections of some of Britain's most celebrated historic scientists and explorers such as Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, David Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, Richard Spruce, Ernest 'Chinese' Wilson and Miles Joseph Berkeley.

Herbarium Collections http://www.kew.org/collections/herbcol.html

Mycological Collection (fungi) http://www.kew.org/collections/fungi.html

The Spirit Collection http://www.kew.org/collections/spiritcol.html

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank ( MSB ) is the largest wild plant seed bank in the world. Based at Wakehurst Place, in West Sussex, the MSB is home to more than a billion seeds, each with the potential to become a plant. By 2010, it will contain seeds from 30,000 (10%) of the world's wild flowering plant species as an insurance policy against loss of these species in the wild. The seeds are stored in an underground vault at a temperature of minus 20C. To access the vault, visitors have to don a protective suit.

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank has the capacity to store up to half the world's wild flowering plant species and already holds 96 per cent of the UK's flora. Species for collection and conservation are prioritised by Kew's partners: all are endangered, rare or of potential economic value. Kew's Millennium Seed Bank has been made possible with generous funding from the Millennium Commission, the Wellcome Trust and Orange plc and other donors; however, it has no secured funding beyond 2010. For further information please visit http://www.kew.org/msbp/index.htm.

DNA Collection

RBG Kew's DNA Bank contains over 31,500 samples of plant DNA material, representing more than 5000 families of plant species, all stored at - 80°C. The DNA Bank is growing all the time all the time, with more than 4,500 samples added in 2007. DNA samples are sent to organisations involved in plant research all over the world.

Anatomical Slide Collection

RBG Kew also has an extensive reference collection of around 100,000 anatomical microscope slides of plant fragments including leaves, stems, roots and a high proportion of wood sections. The collection is often called on to help identify plant material for organisations such as the police, HM Revenue and Customs (identifying products made from endangered timber such as ramin), archaeologists, antique dealers, furniture restorers, hospitals and vets.

http://www.kew.org/scihort/applanat.html

The Living Collection

Kew Gardens has the largest living plant collection in the world of 30,000 species.

The oldest plant in the Gardens, a cycad, is found in the Palm House. Encephalartos altensteinii was introduced from South Africa in 1775.

http://www.kew.org/collections/plants.html

About Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: In 1759 Princess Augusta, mother of King George III, started an ambitious nine-acre garden around Kew Palace. Every generation has added to the charms and curiosities of Kew, now a major international visitor attraction with its 132 hectares of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew is a UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage Site and houses over 40 listed buildings and other structures including the Palm House, Temperate House, Orangery and Pagoda as well as two ancient monuments, Queen Charlotte's Cottage and Kew Palace. RBG, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. www.kew.org.

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