Eleven years after Burton completed The Palm House, he began work on a new building at Kew Gardens that would dwarf it. The Temperate House was twice the size, and so flamboyant that one politican complained to parliament that Kew risked becoming a “gaudy flower garden.” The Palm House at London’s Kew Gardens, completed in 1848, looks like a steamship plowing through a sea of green. The metaphor is apt because the explorers of that era would compete by sailing home from foreign travels with the most bizarre species they could find and bringing them to Kew. One highlight, for example, is the Madagascan suicide palm, which flowers once in 50 years then promptly expires. The Palm House’s oldest plant, an Encephalartos altensteinii palm, was picked This story is from Kinfolk Issue Twenty-Nine Buy Now Related Stories Design Issue 51 John Pawson From the king of minimalism: “I find the essential and get the design down to a point where you can’t add or subtract from it.” Design Interiors Issue 51 Axel Vervoordt Inside the world of Axel Vervoordt. Design Issue 51 Inga Sempé “Minimalism is boring as hell, and on top of that, it’s preachy.” Design Issue 51 Halleroed Meet the giants of Swedish retail design. Design Issue 51 Andrew Trotter The architect and designer on renewing traditional architecture. Design Issue 51 Kim Lenschow The architect who wants to show you how your house works.
Design Issue 51 John Pawson From the king of minimalism: “I find the essential and get the design down to a point where you can’t add or subtract from it.”
