Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant 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. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (brand name Kew), an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs 750 staff, and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

Kew Gardens (disambiguation)

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Kew Gardens, Queens

Kew Gardens is an upper-middle class neighborhood in the central area of the New York City borough of Queens. Kew Gardens, shaped roughly like a triangle, is bounded to the north by the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interboro Parkway), to the east by Van Wyck Expressway and 131st Street, to the south by Hillside Avenue, and to the west by Park Lane, Abingdon Road, and 118th Street. Forest Park and the neighborhood of Forest Hills are to the west, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park north, Richmond Hill south, Briarwood southeast, and Kew Gardens Hills east.

History

Kew Gardens was one of seven planned garden communities built in Queens from the late 19th century to 1950. Much of the area was acquired in 1868 by Englishman Albon P. Man, who developed the neighborhood of Hollis Hill to the south, chiefly along Jamaica Avenue, while leaving the hilly land to the north undeveloped.

Maple Grove Cemetery on Kew Gardens Road opened in 1875. A Long Island Rail Road station was built for mourners in October and trains stopped there from mid-November. The station was named Hopedale, after Hopedale Hall, a hotel located at what is now Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike. In the 1890s, the executors of Man's estate laid out the Queens Bridge Golf Course on the hilly terrains south of the railroad. This remained in use until it was bisected in 1908 by the main line of the Long Island Rail Road, which had been moved 600 feet (180 m) to the south to eliminate a curve. The golf course was then abandoned and a new station was built in 1909 on Lefferts Boulevard. Man's heirs, Aldrick Man and Albon Man Jr., decided to lay out a new community and called it at first Kew and then Kew Gardens after the well-known botanical gardens in England. The architects of the development favored English and neo-Tudor styles, which still predominate in many sections of the neighborhood.

Kew

Coordinates: 51°29′01″N 0°16′41″W / 51.4837°N 0.2780°W / 51.4837; -0.2780

Kew is a suburban district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north-east of Richmond and 7.1 miles (11.4 km) west by south-west of Charing Cross; its population at the 2011 Census was 11,436.

Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is also the home of important historical documents such as Domesday Book, which is on public display at The National Archives.

Successive Tudor, Stuart and Georgian monarchs maintained links with Kew. During the French Revolution, many refugees established themselves there and it was the home of several artists in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Since 1965 Kew has incorporated the former area of North Sheen which includes St Philip and All Saints, the first barn church consecrated in England. It is now in a combined Church of England ecclesiastical parish with St Luke's Church, Kew.

Kew Gardens (LIRR station)

Kew Gardens is a station on the Main Line of the Long Island Rail Road in Kew Gardens, Queens. The station is located at Austin Street and Lefferts Boulevard. One of Kew Garden station's unique features is the 119th Street (Lefferts Boulevard) Bridge which has one story commercial buildings on both sides for local businesses.

History

Kew Gardens station originally opened in May 1879, however a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article points out that the station was not finished as of May, and others claim it was opened on December 6, 1879 as Maple Grove, a flag stop solely to give access to Maple Grove Cemetery. Using today's landmarks (which did not exist then), the Station was located in back of the Mowbray and Kew Gardens Plaza Apartments. A letter to THE LONG ISLAND FORUM, Vol 4 (Dec. 1941) says, "In 1897, I was a locomotive fireman on the L.I.R.R. and at that time the main line of the road between Jamaica and Long Island City was a single track road ... located about 150 or 200 ft. to the east of the present tracks which pass through ... Kew Gardens. A flag station known as Maple Grove was the only station between Jamaica and [Elmhurst]. This track was mostly used by freight trains except in commuting hours when some passenger trains ran over it." [John Tooker, Babylon, LI.] The station was closed in 1882, reopened in 1883, and removed in 1909 as part of the Maple Grove track realignment project.

Kew (disambiguation)

Kew is a place in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK.

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