Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.
The Chelsea Physic Garden was established as the Apothecaries' Garden in London, England, in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to grow plants to be used as medicines. This four acre physic garden, the term here referring to the science of healing, is among the oldest botanical gardens in Britain, after the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. Its rock garden is the oldest in Europe devoted to alpine plants and Mediterranean plants. The largest fruiting olive tree in Britain is there, protected by the garden's heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is doubtless the world's northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors. Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, the garden became a registered charity in 1983 and was opened to the general public for the first time.
Buckingham Palace Garden is a large private park attached to the London residence of the monarch. It is situated to the rear (west) of Buckingham Palace, occupying a 17 hectares site in the City of Westminster and forms the largest private garden in the capital. It is bounded by Constitution Hill to the north, Hyde Park Corner to the west, Grosvenor Place to the south-west, and the Royal Mews, Queen's Gallery, and Buckingham Palace itself to the south and east.
Ulmus laevisPall., variously known as the European white elm, fluttering elm, spreading elm, stately elm and, in the United States, the Russian elm, is a large deciduous tree native to Europe, from France northeast to southern Finland, east beyond the Urals into Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and southeast to Bulgaria and the Crimea; there are also disjunct populations in the Caucasus and Spain, the latter now considered a relict population rather than an introduction by man, and possibly the origin of the European population. U. laevis is rare in the UK, although its random distribution, together with the absence of any record of its introduction, has led at least one British authority to consider it native. NB: The epithet 'white' elm commonly used by British foresters alluded to the timber of the wych elm.
Ulmus serotinaSarg., the September elm, is an autumn-flowering North American species of tree. It is uncommon beyond Tennessee; it is only very locally distributed through Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Georgia, and disjunct populations into Nuevo León, Mexico. It grows predominantly on limestone bluffs and along streams to elevations of 400 m.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Atropurpurea' [:dark purple] was raised from seed at the Späth nursery in Berlin, Germany, circa 1881, as Ulmus montana atropurpurea, and was marketed there till the 1930s, being later classed as a cultivar by Boom. Henry (1913) included it under Ulmus montana cultivars but noted that it was "very similar to and perhaps identical with" Ulmus purpureaHort. At Kew it was renamed U. glabraHuds. 'Atropurpurea', but Späth used U. montana both for wych elm and for some U. × hollandica hybrids, so his name does not necessarily imply a wych elm cultivar. The Hesse Nursery of Weener, Germany, however, which marketed 'Atropurpurea' in the 1950s, listed it in later years as a form of U. glabraHuds..
The hybrid elm cultivar Ulmus × hollandica 'Cinerea' was first listed by George Lindley in 1815, as Ulmus cinerea, the Ash-coloured Elm, and later by the André Leroy Nurseries, Angers, France, in 1856. It was distributed as Ulmus cinerea by the Baudriller nursery, Angers, and as Ulmus montana cinerea by Louis van Houtte of Ghent. A specimen in cultivation at Kew in 1964 was found to be U. × hollandica, but the tree at Wakehurst Place remains listed as U. glabra 'Cinerea'.
The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After being awarded a Millennium Commission grant in 1995, the project commenced in 1996, and is now housed in the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building situated in the grounds of Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. Its purpose is to provide an "insurance policy" against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use. The storage facilities consist of large underground frozen vaults preserving the world's largest wild-plant seedbank or collection of seeds from wild species. The project had been started by Dr Peter Thompson and run by Paul Smith after the departure of Roger Smith. Roger Smith was awarded the OBE in 2000 in the Queen's New Year Honours for services to the Project.
Sir Henry Philip Price, 1st Baronet was a British businessman and philanthropist.
Leonardslee is an English country house and English landscape garden and woodland garden in Lower Beeding, near Horsham, West Sussex, England. The Grade I listed garden is particularly significant for its spring displays of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, magnolias and bluebells, with the flowering season reaching its peak in May. The estate includes a 19th-century Italianate style house and lodge as well as an intact Pulhamite rockery.
Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while 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 illustrations 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.
Salve Regina University is a private Roman Catholic university in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was founded in 1934 by the Sisters of Mercy and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. The university enrolls more than 2,700 undergraduate and graduate students annually.
Pyrus cordata, the Plymouth pear, is a rare wild species of pear belonging to the family Rosaceae. It gets its name from the city of Plymouth in Devon, where it was originally found in 1870 The Plymouth pear was one of the British trees to be funded under English Natures Species Recovery Programme.
The Australian PlantBank is a seed bank located in the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan. The seedbank is part of the Millennium Seed Bank Project. The SeedBank replaced the former NSW Seedbank as part of an upgrade.
The UK Native Seed Hub (UKNSH) is a project of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership growing and distributing seeds of UK native plant species. It is in part a response to the 2010 report Making Space for Nature by Sir John Lawton. The project, located at Wakehurst Place, in West Sussex, in the High Weald of southern England, is dedicated to enhancing the resilience and coherence of the UK's ecological networks by improving the quality, quantity, and diversity of UK seed species available for use in conservation, rehabilitation, and restoration projects.
The Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens in southwest London, was built in 1761 by Sir William Chambers as a present for Princess Augusta, the founder of the gardens. Constructed of grey brick, the pagoda comprises 10 storeys, totalling 163 ft (50 m) in height, with 253 steps to the viewing gallery. Closed for repairs in 2006, the pagoda was reopened in 2018 following a major programme of restoration. It is a Grade I listed building.
Sorbus arvonensis, called the Menai Strait whitebeam or Cerddin Menai, is a whitebeam species in the rose family. It is native to a restricted area along the shore of the Menai Strait in North Wales. The species was first described by Sell (2014) and has been assessed as Critically Endangered.
