Kew Gardens is a botanical garden in southwest London founded in 1759 that houses the “largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world”. Its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. At the same time, the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustration collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London’s top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.

The botanical gardens at Kew formally started in 1759, although they can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury.