Our new Reading Room display ‘Female Figures and Fungi: A Foray into the Mycological Past’ opens today! Come and learn more about the lives and careers of pioneering women in fungi, with many materials on display for the first time. Accessible from 10am-4pm Tuesday to Thursday until 26 August.

The Archives Graduate Trainee recently completed their cataloguing project, working on the papers of William Philip Hiern. Amongst his research papers on Central African plants, they discovered notes which also included a pressed plant specimen! #KewLA

This stunning illustration of Pajanelia longifolia, from Kew's Library and Archives, was painted around 1820 by the artist Vishnupersaud. You can see it on show at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as part of 'In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World' until 16 August 2026. #KewLA

Restoration of Kew's Palm House is likely to begin in 2027. This image of the Palm House interior, from the Library and Archives, was published on this day in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1886. Renovation will ensure that this structure and its important plants can be enjoyed for generations to come.

It's always great to see our PhD placement students share their work. @alyssamyers.bsky.social has written a fascinating blog post about her placement and her findings relating to Kew Gardens' royal history. Read more below ⬇️ #EnvironmentalHumanities #Archives

There are only a few more days to see our small but perfectly formed display on the botanical illustrator Stella Ross Craig - a titan amongst scientific artists of the 20th Century. You can see some of the materials she used to produce her meticulous plant studies, such as this paint palette #KewLA

🚨VACANCY: The Library team is hiring a new Graduate Trainee for a 2-year role. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to go on to a postgraduate course in librarianship or information science! Deadline: 17 May 2026 Start date: 1 Sep 2026 Salary: £29,692 pa careers.kew.org/internal/vac...

🚨VACANCY: The Archives team is hiring a new Graduate Trainee for a 2-year role. They will be working in the Archives and Records Management team, gaining valuable experience pre-qualification. Deadline: 17 May 2026 Start date: 1 Sep 2026 Salary: £29,692 pa careers.kew.org/vacancy/arch... #KewLA

An unusual find: botanical and automobile records in one item! This 'Register for Motorists' from N D Simpson's (1890-1974) collection records not only plant collecting trips through Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), but also how much petrol Simpson's Alvis car used and how much that cost. #KewLA #Archives

While looking through our collection, the team came across a series of photographs capturing a Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) in bloom in 1901. Now, 125 years later, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, another Titan arum in Kew is preparing to flower once again #KewLA

Another week another find shared with the team by our 'Archives Revealed' cataloguer: Elisabeth de Gravers Watling kept this diary to document encounters with nature in India when she was 10. This Spider Lily is particularly impressive, although her governess only deemed it ‘fair’! #KewLA

One of the good things about visiting my folks in NE Scotland is enjoying another round of spring flowers!

Ahead of the bank holiday weekend, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter and share some more blossoms from the Library and Archives, both inside and outside the building💐 #KewLA

Call for participants of Asian, African and Caribbean heritage: join free creative workshops at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where we will be critically engaging with historical botanical records about fruit, forestry and plant collection - plus opportunity to co-curate a public exhibition. ⬇️

I don't always get a chance to see what is flowering in the Gardens during the working week so it was nice to see some of the spectacular blossoms near the Palm House recently. Of course we are lucky to have our own blossoms in the Library and Archives, but in botanical illustration form! #KewLA

An illuminating and fascinating workshop at the Imperial War Museum as part of the Resettling the Colonial Lens project led by University of Nottingham

Hello! I thought this account would be a nice opportunity to share a bit more about the collections and work going on at Kew Gardens' Library and Archives. Here is a beautiful spring-like image of a Narcissus and a Fritillaria from a work by Sebastian Schedel known as the Calendarium