Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

This article is about the non-departmental public body. For the botanical gardens in Kew, south-west London, see Kew Gardens.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
TypeNon-departmental public body
Location
Key people
Budget
£65.6 million[1]
Employees
1,100
Websitewww.kew.org

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff.[1] Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.

The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, and at Wakehurst, a National Trust property in Sussex which is home to the internationally important Millennium Seed Bank, whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries.[2] Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission, founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers.[3] In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum, was formed as a partnership between Kew and the Castle Howard Estate.[4]

In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst.[5] Its 326-acre (132 ha) site at Kew has 40 historically important buildings; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.[6] The collections at Kew and Wakehurst include over 27,000 taxa of living plants,[7] 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens, and over 40,000 species in the seed bank.[8]

  1. ^ a b Annual reports 2020.
  2. ^ "How we work". Millennium Seed Bank. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  3. ^ England, Forestry Commission. "History of Bedgebury National Pinetum". www.forestry.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 16 August 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  4. ^ "Background". The Yorkshire Arboretum. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  5. ^ "ALVA – Association of Leading Visitor Attractions". www.alva.org.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  6. ^ Guinness World Records 2011. Guinness World Records. 2010. pp. 69. ISBN 978-1-904994-57-2.
  7. ^ "Living Collections at Kew". kew.org.
  8. ^ "Science collections at Kew". kew.org.