Nestled on the banks of the river Thames, Kew Gardens in southwest London is home to the most diverse collection of living plants anywhere in the world. At 330 acres in size, it’s London’s largest UNESCO world heritage site, and has a history stretching back more than 250 years.
The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, attracts more than 1.6 million visitors every year, coming to see the 30,000 different kinds of plants, and to visit the Herbarium, which has over seven million preserved plant specimens. As an internationally important botanical research and educational institution, Kew’s library contains more than three quarters of a million books, along with more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plant life.
