KEW GARDENS TURNS 250

MILLENNIUM BLOOMS AT KEW


It is summer time for the Britons, but for the Dandelions and Daffodils of Kew, it is not. The Royal Garden is turning 250 this year. With the fairies of the mid-summer still on veil, Kew is one of the best loved gardens in the world, from the time of imperial botany to the present. Beyond the stunning crocus carpet that catches the eye, there is an unique collection of plants from all over the world, relics of an Empire that never let the sun to set on its fleets. The land and its lush greenery has just remained the same, though the wild Cinerarias once used to poison-arrows now lie on the desks of the Jodrell Laboratory here. The science at Kew has long diverted from classical botany to cytogenetics and molecular biology. Seven million plant specimens form the permanent record in the Herbarium here, being the largest depository of botanical information and authentic reference for systematists world over. And ofcourse for amazement, the authority of the gardens hold a forensic section, advising the Sherlock Holmes from all over the world. Forensic horticulture is one among the most arcane activities of the Royal Garden. The library also will be the best in the world, with its archive of over 7,50,000 books and manuscripts on botanical literature. The fragrance of the Madagascar Jasmine is still there from the Arboretum- tree land of great variety. Even while you will be eager to find the Pharoah’s Palm, your techno-friend will be fascinated by the colossal frames of the Palmhouse built in 1840s, the first of its kind by wrought iron in the world. It is a perfect blend of the medieval and modern virtues with the school children coming for the Great Plant Hunt-Britain’s biggest School Science Project which invites kids to be a part in the exploration programmes. On the other edge, there is the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership that seeks international co-operation on conservation efforts for the endangered green-folks. With an ambitious team of 200 scientists from over 100 countries, this is not a gardner’s game, but an Armageddon against the upcoming adders of global environmental change.


Kew-the Beginning
Let’s leave Kew, for a while, both in time and place to the beginning decades of the 17th Century, the legendary era of English revolution in crop-improvement and agriculture. Here comes the man in armour, who has just returned from a punitive military expedition to the North African Barbary Coast to confront the Pirates. His name is John Tradescant, a naturalist and plant explorer, and the most influential political figures in the emerging British Empire. This is in 1620, that we are seeing him and he has carried something to furnish his grace, they are a few varieties of the Apricot! It was infact the part of an early strategy for systematically improving the crop and to analyse the natural wealth from the newly discovered/ conquered islands and places. Winning the favour of Lord Salisbury and Duke of Buckingham, Tradescant is known to exhort the British merchants: “procure all manner of curiosities abroad… all manner of beasts and fowells… seeds, plants, trees or shrubs…”1 Everybody was to collect something, any potentially useful specimens of plant or animal life. His follower, John Tradescant-the Younger also, introduced many American plants into the Europe, including the Magnolias, Bald Cypresses and Asters. However, as said by Tradescant himself, these explorations were reliant upon the whims of the high society rather than scientific or botanical. It was only in the eighteenth century that these collections were viewed in an utilitarian way, especially in the context of the reinvented Babylonian botanical concepts.
During the mid-eighteenth century, there was an explosion in the nurturing of botanical interest in the highest social circles of Europe. Dozens of crops were transplanted from one continent to another for a wide range of purposes and there was much intercourse between the various patrons of such breeding ventures. Such links helped the nourishment of the Anglo-French alliance, encouraged especially by Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles I and sister to the French King, Louis XIII. At first, the botanic gardens were of no commercial value and they remained only as the sites for seed multiplication or trial cultivation of crops from overseas. The systematic and state-sponsored botanical ventures were undertaken by the Dutch East India and West India Companies, for the first time in history, through the establishment of a series of formal botanic gardens in their tropical colonies. It also marked the beginning of the economic botany, not as a branch of science, but as a basis for a lucrative commercial opportunity. The promotion of applied plant-sciences soon became an integral part of the government policy in Netherland too. The Britain couldn’t wait anymore as botany and colonial power were getting into a nexus and earnestly in 1759, it initiated the beginning of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.2


Evidently, the first botanic garden established in the United Kingdom was not Kew (It was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, started in 1621) and there were many versions of the same site by the Hanoverian monarchs in the early 1720s and 40s. However, an enduring establishment culminating nearly to the present form was largely due to the efforts of Augusta, Princess of Wales and John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Bute. Stuart was a student of Linnaeus, who had travelled to Leiden in Holland to study botany. By 1754 he based himself in a house on Kew that opened directly onto the garden itself, with an extensive botanical library that formed part of the house. Widely known as the finest botanist in England, it was John Stuart’s earnest desire to have garden which would contain “all the plants known on earth”. It was he who recommended William Chambers, the young energetic architect to princess Augusta, who had a new plan of design phases. Another key figure that shaped the Royal Garden was Joseph Banks who was the president of the Royal Society from 1788 to 1820. He was part of Captain James Cook’s First Circumnavigation Expedition during 1768 to 1771, returning with no fewer than 1300 new species of plants. Bank and Cook were welcomed back as heroes and the former was more praised by being nominated as Kew’s scientific advisor. Joseph Banks’ first concern was to out do the Jardin des Plantes, the French competent of the Kew Gardens. It was flourishing as the main botanic garden and research centre at France under the coveted naturalist Comte de Buffon. It is notworthy that these collections helped the next generations of naturalists including the evolutionist Jean Baptiste Lamarck on the French side and Charles Darwin, with Kew as reference, on the English side.


Garden Getting the Shape
“I spend money on war because it is necessary, but to spend it on science, that is pleasant to me-3spake George III, the son of Princess Augusta who was in throne at the time of Britain’s industrialisation. Apart from this, the history was taking a harsh turn with the French farmers who experienced widespread crop failures. Famine was on the way with chronic grain shortages all over the French land and by June 1789, its government was forced to appeal for a shipment of wheat from Britain.4 It was refused and the famished French populace exploded into a rebellion, the Great French Revolution. Within weeks, the French monarchy, the hitherto strongest power in Europe was overthrown and a Republic was declared with much bloodshed. For the British, it was a lesson of future state-craft with botany and agriculture as a weapons of power. For the Kew also it was a period of revolution, the gardens of Richmond and earlier Kew were physically joined for the first time in history. Many previous constructions of non-botanical interest were demolished while others seriously mended. Joseph Banks competed vigorously to display all the new specimens from the expanding colonies of the British, with over 800 new species of trees and shrubs. A glass house was separately built for the African plants alone, later came to be known as the Botany Bay and a Hot House was built for tropical and Australian plants. King George III was particular about the adoption of many private gardens and in 1794, he purchased Rev. Thomas Methold’s garden collections. The two men, Joseph Banks and King George along with Queen Charlotte were especially enthusiastic to make it an explicit emblem of imperial growth. This added impetus to botanize the empire is well demonstrated by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, in a poem entitled The Botanic Garden.

The death of Joseph Banks coinciding with that of George III undermined the garden’s progress in all respects. Underfunding and the lack of botanic vision caused the garden to decline under the reigns of George IV and William IV. There was even a time of considerable public opinion demanding the garden to be shutdown, viewing it as an imperial extravaganza. However, the spring was not far behind. In 1840, the Treasury was forced to transfer the funding to the Kew to the Office of the Woods and Forests and it was declared as a National Botanic Garden. And for the first time an official director was appointed for the garden separately, Sir William Hooker. He was for the infrastructure improvement and under his benign directorship (1841-1865), the garden saw a renaissance with many iconic physical structures. He built the Palm House, redesigning the landscape and founding the Herbarium. He was followed by his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker who laid out the National Arboretum and built the Temperate House. His period (1865-1885) was also marked by the redevelopment of the colonial links between Malaysian and Indian economies and also with the West Indies. Queen Victoria’s patronage was generous but the Boer War and then two World Wars caused the down fall of the Britain’s wealth and resources had to be cut down inevitably


The Modern Kew
Post-War Britain was a lion without mane, with the projects and grants coming to an end, atleast for a while. It was during this period that there was a mission change also, rather than becoming “the Eden on Earth”, the Royal Garden turned towards conservation biology. However, economic hardship prevented reformation and development for years and years. The rejuvenation came again during the bicentennial time, in 1959, with the restoration and re-opening of the Palm House with reorganization of the Rock Garden, Azalaea Garden and Rose Pagola. The Jordell Laboratory was an eventful addition of 1963, that expanded the garden’s research base. An expansion followed again in 1965 when the garden took the management of Wakehurst Place in Sussex, to become Kew’s sister estate in the country. This provided a new sprouting ground for the seeds less adapted to the Kew soil and changing climate. The momentum of development was gained once again when Princess of Wales Conservatory was founded in 1984 followed by the Sir Joseph Banks Centre for Economic Botany in 1985. Through the 80s and 90s, another great organization also came to join hands with the Kew, the links between IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and the garden became strong and influential. There had been an urge for the study of fungi also during last decades leading to the establishment of the Mycological Institute, finally acquired by Kew in 1994. And with all its proud heritage the Kew Gardens has now entered the 21st century as a millennium organization. Being so nice and so nan, everything at Kew still holds this simple maxim:- “All life depends on plants”.


BOTANIC GARDENS IN HISTORY
The history of botanic gardens dates back to over 3000 years. The Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III (BC 745-727) started his career as a gardener and ended as one of the greatest rulers of the Assyrian Empire. He was the follower of Tiglath-Pileser I, one of the first monarchs who established a botanic garden. In his capital city of Nineveh, he planted hundreds of plant specimens, collected during his military campaigns.
The Neo-Assyrian King, Sennacherib rebuilt the Nineveh gardens and they remained as the precursor for the most famous ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It is believed that King Nebuchadnezzar II (605-561BC) built them to console his malden wife Amytis, who was from a montane homeland. The gravity-defying chain pumps that continuously raised water from ground level to these roof-gardens still remains as an engineering mystery.
The Persians who conquered the Babylon in 539 BC continued the tradition of their botanic gardens. King Xerxes was a keen botanist who tried to establish gardens as practical centres of plant cultivation, throughout his Empire. The Persians called their gardens “Paradaida”. A few centuries later, when the Greeks came, they used the word “Paradeisos” (to what we refer to day as “Paradise” today !) Such was the eternal bliss the gardens possessed.
Botanic experimental gardens were widespread in the Islamic world from Eighth Century AD. They were staffed by expert agronomists and botanists, who collected exotic plants and even developed new crop varieties. The earliest botanic gardens in Europe were in the southern part of Italy which was under the Muslim rulers for many years. The first of its kind is believed to be in Salerno by Sylaticus in 1310 and in Venice by Gualterius in 1330.
After the Renaissance, botanic gardens became a novel practice, forming part of cities and universities. Gardens of botanical interest were set up in Pisa in 1543, Padua, Parma and Florence in 1545, Bologna in 1568, Leyden in 1577, Leipzlg in 1580, Konigsberg in 1581, Paris in 1590 and Oxford in 1621. The list is too large to comprehended and the latest is the Botanic Garden in Oman, in the desert (!) which is going to be one of the largest botanic gardens in the world.


A POEM ON KEW GARDEN
There is a poem Kew, written in 1784 by Erasmus Darwin, the most celebrated scientists in the late eighteenth century. The poem is entitled ‘The Botanic Garden’ which eulogizes George III and Queen Charlotte of England who rescued the garden from the ephemeral fashion trends towards an instrument of state-power. Though seeming bombastic to the modern reader, it is full of all allegorical expressions revealing the emerging imperial might of the British Empire. Here is an extract:

So sites enthron’d in vegetable pride
Imperial Kew by Thame’s glittering side
Obedient sails from realms unfurrow’d bring
For her the unnam’d progeny of spring…
Delighted Thames through tropic umbrage glides
And flowers Antaratic, bending O’er his tides;
Drinks the new tints, the sweets unknown inhales
And calls the sons of science to this vales.
In one bright point admiring Nature eyes
The fruits and foliage of discordant skies,
Twines the gay floret with the fragrant bough
And bends the wreath round George’s royal bow…
With beauty blossom’d, and with virtue blaz’d,
Mark the fair scions, that themselves have rais’d;
Sweet blooms the Rose, the towering Oak expands,
The Grace and Guard of Britain’s golden land.


BOOK ON KEW
“The Gardens at Kew” is the first major historical review of the Royal Botanic Garden. Written by Allen Paterson, it describes the evolution of Kew from a private pleasure ground to the light house of botanical information. The book is well illustrated with photographs of the garden today and much valued archive drawings from Kew’s collection. The book has many curious descriptions such as the “Old Lions” in Kew, the few remaining trees with oldest date of planting, as old as 1762. They were the Maidenhair Tree- Ginkgo biloba, Pagoda Tree – Sophora japonica, etc. The book is worth useful for a botanist as well as a general reader. It is published by Frances Lincoln in association with the Kew Gardens.


THE KEW HERBARIUM
With a profound collection of 7 million specimens, the Kew Herbarium simply hails itself as the largest herbarium in the world. It is a replica of the biodiversity on earth in terms of its vast collections from all the parts of the world, from tropic to temporate and montane to riverine. Eversince its foundation in 1853, the herbarium collections grew through the amalgamation of several formerely private collections such as Sir William Hooker’s and George Benthams. Surprisingly, it include the botanical collections of Charles Darwin too. The Kew herbarium is housed in a building originally known as the ‘Hunter House’ from the 18th century. The central building was occupied by King of Hanover until his death and with the addition of William Hooker’s collections, the first wing was added followed by three more additions. The Herbarium is not open to the public, until now, but with the recently started ‘digitisation programme’, virtual visitors can analyse the specimens, if they wish. Kew has also implemented an electronic catalogue, known as the ‘Herbcat’. It is interesting as well as informatory, with each specimen holding a specific barcode, giving details about its collection, history and form. The herbarium also holds over 800,000 specimens of fungi, including those from the classical Mycological Herbarium of M.J. Berkeley. The Mycological collections of Kew are growing at the rate of three thousand to four thousand specimens in a year.


EDUCATION AT KEW
Kew has established a series of international diploma courses for students and people working in botanic gardens and other plant conservation organizations. The Royal Garden considers it as a contribution towards the implementation of the GSPC- the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. As per the official sources, the Diploma Course offers the following:
 Opportunity for the best exposure, participating in the activities of other international organizations also.
 Freedom to chose issues that one is particularly interested, though specialized options for project work.
 Entry to a forum for exchanging ideas, problems and solutions.
 Forming a part of an international network, working towards plant biodiversity conservation.


CAREER AT KEW
Job opportunities at Kew will be announced time to time through the website of the garden. However, there are always a welcome for the volunteers. There are mainly three kind of volunteers, such as Discovery Volunteers, Information Volunteers and Horticultural Volunteers. Discovery Volunteers for assisting the Discovery Programme by Kew, aiming to work joyfully with the elderly and disabled people, with an ability to convey the knowledge top people of mixed abilities. The Information Volunteers form a small team based at the Information Desk at Victoria Plaza where they answer visitor’s questions. There are also opportunities for those who wish to process Friend Memberships through internet. Horticultural Volunteers support the work of horticulturists in outdoors and glass houses. Anybody who is interested in the future vacancies can contact the volunteer page, through internet and by checking it regularly, may know their status.


ATTRACTIONS AT KEW
Rhododendron Dell : Originally known as the Hollow Walk, this was carved out of the Thames Flood Plain. By the time of William Aiton, the gardener, the place was reshaped from its previous form with Rhododendrons. These were sent by Joseph Dalton Hooker from Sikkim and they rated the finest in display, in the entire United Kingdom. There are over 700 specimens planted in the Dell, with some unique hybrids found only here.


The Queen’s Garden : The Queen’s Garden, as the name explains includes those plants exclusively grown in Britain before and during the 17th century. A specialty is that, here the labeling of plants differs from the Kew’s norm by including the common names from the 17th century, a virtue or quotation from the herbal books and authors from the past.


Minka House : The form of the traditional Japanese building was built in the Bamboo Garden, in 2001. It is used as a space for workshops, displays and other events. The location, the Bamboo garden contains 135 species of bamboos, brought mainly from India and Japan.


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES


JAMES COOK (1728-1779)
British explorer, navigator and castrographer. Cook was the first to map NewFoundland, prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean. He achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. He was a courageous explorer, who went to dangerous locations to confirm the facts. For example, he was involved in the exploration of the Great Barrier Reef, in the Freezing Antarctic Circle. He was with Joseph Banks in his first voyage and contributed about 1300 species of plants to the Kew. Cook was killed in Hawaii during his third expedition.


WILLIAM AITON (1731-1793)
English gardener. William Aitons’ name is associated with the beginning of the Kew Garden, since, it was he whom princess Augusta appointed in 1759, to develop her botanic garden. William Aiton was born is Scotland and was trained as a gardener from childhood. In 1783, Aiton gained control over the garden and six years later published his ‘Hortus Kewnensis’, a catalogue of plants at Kew. He was followed by his son William Townsend Aiton. He preceded the first director of Kew, William Jackson Hooker.


COMTE DE BUFFORN (1707-1788)French naturalist, mathematician and cosmologist. Buffon was the Director of the Jardin du Roi (now called the jardin des Plantes), the French equivalent of the Kew Gardens. It is still the main botanical garden in France. The garden was originally Planted by Guyde La Brosse, Louis XIII’s Physician, in 1626, as a medicinal herb garden. Joseph Banks at Kew tried to compete with this tradition and it led to the improvement of the Kew a lot. So, Bufforn is still respected as a motive force for the modern Kew.

Reference
1. Tradescant J. (1925). Letter to E. Nicholas, 31st July 1625, The Tradescants: their Plants, Gardens and Museum, 1570-1662, M. Joseph, London, UK.
2. Chaplin J. (2003) The Natural History of British Imperialism, Journal of British Studies 42, 127-131.
3. Gregory R.A. (1916). Discovery or the Spirit and Service of Science, Macmillan, London, UK.
4. Fagan B.M. (2001). The Little Ice Age: Climate Made History, 1300-1850, Basic Books, New York, USA.
5. Kew Botanic Garden Website: http://www.kew.org/