Kew Gardens Palm House London Retro Style Art Print

This illustration has been inspired by a recent visit to Kew, and has been drawn from one of my photos from this angle. I wanted to depict the scale of the plants next to a mere human, with them towering above our heads in their majesty and beauty, against a backdrop of Victorian iron and glass architecture.

About the Palm House:

An iconic Victorian glasshouse, the rainforest climate inside supports a unique collection of tropical plants from some of the most threatened environments on Earth.

A living laboratory: The Palm House recreates a rainforest climate, a living laboratory supporting a diversity of plants from the tropical regions of the world, all under one roof.

The plantings simulate this multilayered habitat, with canopy palms and other trees, climbers and epiphytes down to the shorter understorey plants and dwarf palms.

Many plants in this collection are endangered in the wild, some even extinct. There are many species here studied by Kew scientists for research into medicines.

The Palm House was constructed in 1844 by Richard Turner to Decimus Burton’s designs to provide a home for the tropical plants that Victorian explorers brought back from their adventures in the tropics.

No one had ever built a glasshouse on this scale before and to do so the architects borrowed techniques from the ship building industry which may explain why the Palm House looks like the upturned hull of a ship.

Today the Palm House is one of Kew’s most recognisable buildings having gained iconic status as the world’s most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure.

(from: https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/attractions/palm-house)

This colourful print would brighten up any room and would make a lovely gift for friends or family. Produced from a hand-drawn illustration, this design is digitally drawn and coloured on computer. Digitally printed on fsc certified 200gsm semi-gloss paper.