Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (RBGK)

The Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, contain the official record of the Gardens, as well as personal and corporate papers relating to the history of botany more broadly. They are formed of unpublished documents, such as correspondence, notebooks, manuscripts, registers, unpublished maps and plans, and photograph albums. Together with the published Library collections and Illustrations (curated by separate teams), they form Kew’s Library and Archives.  

The archives date mostly from the 1840s onwards, when Kew became a public institution, but there are some notable older series of records dating back to the 18th century. Key series include: 

• The Directors’ Correspondence 1820s-1920s 
• The Miscellaneous Reports 1840s-1930s, a series of 772 volumes relating to economic botany 
• The Goods Inwards and Outwards series, 1798-1980, documenting plant exchanges 
• Personal papers of botanists and mycologists such as William and Joseph Hooker, Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin, Marianne North, Henry Ridley and Elsie Wakefield 
• Notebooks of plant collecting 
• Staff records 
• Maps and plans of the Kew site and buildings 

Many of the records document colonial botany and the appropriation of natural resources for purposes of economic botany. We have identified some starting points in looking at this history and are committed to transparency over Kew’s history on a basis of detailed research into the Archives.  

We have an active programme of humanities research at Kew, with archives staff supervising collaborative doctoral award students and student placements. 

Our collections are available by appointment in our public Reading Room – please see our website for opening hours – Accessing Kew’s Library and Archives | Kew 

To access our catalogue, please click here – Home Page (calmview.eu) 

Digitised archive collections can be found in JSTOR Plant Science – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Archives: Directors’ Correspondence, Global Plants on JSTOR, our Joseph Hooker Correspondence website  –Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project | Kew and in the Biodiversity Heritage Library  – Browse Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives – Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org) 

To contact the Archives, please email archives@kew.org