1 July 2024
Leafy legacies: revealing the stories preserved within Kew Gardens’ Library and Archives
Learn about how our collections capture legacies of those who have made Kew what it is today, as currently showcased in a new exhibition in the Library & Archives Reading Room.
Kew’s Library & Archives span over 2000 years of plant knowledge and discovery.
The collections are a rich source of botanic knowledge and history and attract researchers from all over the world to visit.
The collections are less known for the staff histories they capture; the legacies of ordinary people, who have all contributed to Kew’s development and shaped its extraordinary history.
Leafy Legacies is a new exhibition in the Library and Archives which tells these stories, through a fascinating variety of items from across the collection.
Keepers of knowledge
Kew’s Library was created in 1852 with the donation of 600 books by Eliza Bromfield, after the death of her brother William. As the size and scope of Kew Gardens’ horticultural and scientific work has grown, so has the library accompanying it.
Whilst the Library holds published knowledge, the Archive contains primary source materials that capture the history of Kew and the people who have contributed to it. The archive developed alongside the library, with both collections now spanning hundreds of metres of shelving.
The first person to have the official job title of ‘Librarian’ was Henry S. Marshall. He worked at Kew from the 1920s, and over the next few decades worked his way up from an assistant in the Herbarium to become the first Head Librarian.
By the 1960s, the Library & Archives had outgrown its original home.
Head Librarian Ray Desmond helped design and move the library into a new wing of the Herbarium. He also dedicated many years to writing “The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew”, an invaluable book to learn more about Kew's past.
Women workers at Kew
Records of women working at Kew in the early 20th century are striking given that so few roles in science and horticulture were occupied by them at the time.
One of the earliest women scientists at Kew was Mary Letitia Green (1886 - 1973) who started working in the Herbarium in 1912. In 1925, she was promoted to “Sub-assistant (Index Kewensis)”.
The Index Kewensis is a published register of all scientific names for plants which produce seeds. This still exists today as the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), now freely available online.
Green advocated for her salary to be re-graded several times throughout her career at Kew. In 1927, she wrote: ‘In view of the technical nature of my work I now venture to ask that I may be placed on the same footing as the other scientific members of the staff both as regards title and scale of pay’.
Another legacy preserved in the Library & Archives is M. Muriel Whiting. Whiting was a horticulturist and plant collector, who volunteered in the Herbarium identifying plant specimens. She donated over 600 specimens to Kew’s Herbarium, including those she collected in Hong Kong, China, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Her legacy lives on today, through the digitisation of her herbarium specimens as part of the Herbarium digitisation project.
My Grandfather told me, that when I was about four, he used to take me for walks, and couldn’t […] get me to go past a blade of grass – that was the beginning of my interest in plants and flowers.
Extract from “Marian Muriel Whiting Reminiscences”. M. Muriel Whiting interviewed by R. D. Meikle, 26th February 1974. Copyright RBG Kew
We do not only have letters, collecting notebooks and specimens from Muriel Whiting; her memories about her life and career can be heard in an interview held in the Library & Archives Oral History collection.
Kew's gardeners
Gardeners are probably the first job to come to mind when thinking about people who work at Kew.
Gardener George Bond is one of the earliest to be recorded in the collections.
Whilst working as a gardener, he showed artistic promise. He drew around 1700 plants at Kew between 1826-1835. They can still be spotted in our collections by his distinctive pencil ‘B’ signature.
Some of his illustrations were published anonymously in Curtis’ Botanical Magazine, a publication still running to this day.
Students at Kew Gardens
Students have travelled from all over the world to train at Kew for over a century.
One such student was aspiring horticulturalist Kanichiro Yashiroda. He sailed from Kagawa, Japan to England to begin his studentship in May of 1925.
After studying in the gardens for a year, he returned to Japan, where he continued a working relationship with Kew, even having ‘Kan Yashiroda, Late of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England’ as his letter head.
There are records of his plant collecting nursery and business in the Archives, including lists of seeds he sent to England.
He later published guides on bonsai cultivation, in partnership with the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. The library holds a copy of one of his Bonsai books, sent to Kew ‘with the author’s compliments’.
These stories a just a handful taken from the people and jobs that have helped to make the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, what it is today. The Library & Archives collection vitally captures them, preserving personal as well as institutional legacies. You can learn more by visiting Leafy Legacies or learn more about accessing our collections.
