KEW GARDENS opens the world’s first gallery dedicated to botanic art this weekend.
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Inside the UKP3 million Shirley Sherwood gallery, visitors will be able to see the highlights of Kew’s 200,000 paintings, drawings and sketches, some of which date back over 700 years.
“The primary reason they have been collected is for scientific research but many of them are very beautiful in their own right,” said Chris Mills, Kew’s head of library, art and archives.
The gallery is just one of the new exhibits to be heading for Kew over the summer. Coming in May as part of the Year of the Tree Festival is a tree-top walkway and, at the other extreme, a subterranean route into the world of roots.
Next year, there’s the launch of a public reading room where Kew’s 300,000+ books will be housed.
The Shirley Sherwood gallery opens Saturday, 19 April.
