Kew Gardens / With 24 full-page Illustrations in Colour - 1

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

THE COTSWOLDS

By G. F. Nicholls and Francis Duckworth

NORTH DEVON

By Henry B. Wimbush and F. J. Snell

SOUTH DEVON

By C. E. Hannaford and Charles Rowe, M.J.I.

GALLOWAY

By James Faed, Jun., and J. M. Sloan

IRELAND

By Francis S. Walker, R.H.A., and Frank Mathew

LIVERPOOL

By J. Hamilton Hay and Dixon Scott

THE PEAK COUNTRY

By W. Biscombe Gardner and A. R. Hope Moncrieff

KEW GARDENS

AGENTS

America	The Macmillan Company 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
Australasia	The Oxford University Press, Melbourne
Canada	The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd. 27 Richmond Street West, Toronto
India	Macmillan & Company, Ltd. Macmillan Building, Bombay 309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta

THE RHODODENDRON DELL

KEW GARDENS

PAINTED BY
T. MOWER MARTIN, R.C.A.

DESCRIBED BY
A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF

WITH
24 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908

PREFACE

Kew Gardens contain what seems the completest botanical collection in the world, handicapped as it is by a climate at the antipodes of Eden, and by a soil that owes less to Nature than to patient art. Before being given up to public pleasure and instruction, this demesne was a royal country seat, specially favoured by George III. That homely King had two houses here and began to build a more pretentious palace, a design cut short by his infirmities, but for which Kew might have usurped the place of Windsor. For nearly a century it kept a close connection with the Royal Family, as the author illustrates in his story of the village and the Gardens, while the artist has found most effective subjects in the rich vegetation gathered into this enclosure and in the relics of its former state.

	PAGE
[I]
Royal Residences	[1]
[II]
Kew in Favour	[31]
[III]
The Story of the Gardens	[83]
[IV]
The Village: In and about It	[113]
[V]
Visiting the Gardens	[157]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.	The Rhododendron Dell	[Frontispiece]
		FACING PAGE
2.	The Wild Garden in Spring	[8]
3.	The Lake	[18]
4.	The Queen’s Cottage	[30]
5.	In Queen’s Cottage Gardens	[34]
6.	Looking up the Thames	[42]
7.	The Pagoda	[58]
8.	The Water-Lily Pond	[64]
9.	The Palace	[78]
10.	In the Italian Garden	[90]
11.	The Ruined Arch	[96]
12.	The Azaleas	[102]
13.	The Peonies	[108]
14.	The Palm Trees and Main Gate	[112]
15.	The Rhododendron Walk	[124]
16.	The Poppy Beds	[138]
17.	The Rosary	[146]
18.	Wild Hyacinths	[152]
19.	In the Rock Garden	[158]
20.	The Palm House	[164]
21.	The Greenhouse	[172]
22.	Wild Flowers in the Beech Woods	[176]
23.	The Lake, looking South	[198]
24.	The Herbaceous Ground	[200]

PREFACE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS