Kew Community Open Week
Archive Show & Tell

Event Information

Join us for another archive session which will take place within Kew Gardens during Community Open Week (14th–18th May), aligning with Kew’s general summer programme themed around trees. Featured items include botanical illustrations, notebooks on urban trees, and correspondence about risks to urban plants.

Kew Gardens’ Archives and Illustrations teams will host show and tell sessions relating to themes of colonialism and deforestation, historic uses of trees, and the role of trees in cities. One of these sessions will be held in our Reading Room and will be run by members of Archives and Illustrations staff as well as one of our PhD students, who is currently researching Kew’s Arboretum. They will be showcasing specific items from our collections, contextualising them, as well as giving a wider introduction to our service.

Another of the show and tell sessions will be held in the Gardens to align with Kew’s Community Open Week (14th-18th May), which is also set up around the theme ‘Trees’. This ties in with Kew Gardens’ general summer visitor programme centred around the topic as well. The show and tell sessions will draw upon past research into trees in our collections, e.g. a past exhibition on deforestation or upcoming publications around the ‘Tree Gang’. Featured items will include botanical illustrations, notebooks containing observations on trees in cities, and correspondence on the risk to urban plants.

Sessions will take place within Kew Gardens during Community Open Week (14th–18th May), aligning with Kew’s general summer programme themed around trees. Featured items include botanical illustrations, notebooks on urban trees, and correspondence about risks to urban plants.

Each session will be approximately 1.5 hours long.

• Wheelchair access: Reception and Reading Room

• Wheelchair accessible toilet: Available in Reception and Reading Room

• No onsite parking

• No catering facilities

Contributors

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Kew Gardens is a UNESCO World Heritage site, whose mission is to understand and protect plants and fungi for the wellbeing of people and the future of all life on Earth. The Archive, Illustrations, and Library collections contain materials spanning 700 years across ~320,000 printed items, 200,000 illustrations, and 7 million archive items.

@kewgardens

@rbgkew.bsky.social

Location of event

Location: Behind the Temperate House in Kew Gardens, nearest entrance is Victoria Gate.

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Kew Gardens is a short walk from both Kew Bridge (national rail) and Kew Gardens (underground and overground) stations. Routes are signposted. Accessible by buses 65, 110, 237, and 267.