This Gardens Trust talk on May 5 is the second in our 2nd series on Victorian Gardens on Thurs @ 10.00 GMT (5 am Eastern). £5 each or all 6 for £30. Register through Eventbrite HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

At the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, the royal gardens at Kew were regarded as an unnecessary expense and threatened with closure. Saved by a press and parliamentary campaign, Kew was transferred from royal to public ownership in 1840, and Sir William Hooker was appointed director.

To build Kew’s status, Hooker persuaded the royal family to grant more land and commissioned a magnificent new Palm House. Designed by iron-founder Richard Turner and architect Decimus Burton, the Palm House employed the latest in engineering technology. Hailed as ‘the glory of the gardens’, the Palm House offered Londoners the experience of a day trip to the tropics. Britain’s foremost landscape designer, William Nesfield, laid out the surrounding grounds to make the Palm House the centrepiece of Kew.

Kate Teltscher explores the function of the Palm House as imperial symbol and botanical spectacle. She traces Hooker’s transformation of Kew from small run-down garden into splendid national botanic establishment. Dr Kate Teltscher is a cultural historian and writer. Her most recent book is the acclaimed Palace of Palms: Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew (Picador, 2020). She is an Emeritus Fellow of the School of Humanities at the University of Roehampton, Honorary Research Associate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.