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 Fashion Issue 19 Nick Wakeman Creating a menswear-inspired line for women, Nick Wakeman welcomes the challenges arising from forging new aesthetic territories. Design Issue 19 David Rager David Rager, co-founder of design firm Weekends, shares his tale of LA and Paris and how he makes time for life’s little distractions. Design Issue 19 A Day in the Life: Frida Escobedo With her own firm and scores of global projects in her inventive portfolio, this architect is transforming Mexico City, one artful building at a time. Design Issue 19 In Anxious Anticipation The effects of adrenaline are positively pulse-pounding, but the physical whoosh we feel in our bodies actually starts in our brains. Design Issue 18 Happiness by Design Think more like designers: The strategies employed to create a perfectly proportioned bookshelf can also be used to enhance our personal well-being. Design Issue 18 Sense in Symmetry From radial swirls to mirror images, the natural world often shows that there’s beauty in balance.
Fashion Issue 19 Nick Wakeman Creating a menswear-inspired line for women, Nick Wakeman welcomes the challenges arising from forging new aesthetic territories.
Design Issue 19 David Rager David Rager, co-founder of design firm Weekends, shares his tale of LA and Paris and how he makes time for life’s little distractions.
Design Issue 19 A Day in the Life: Frida Escobedo With her own firm and scores of global projects in her inventive portfolio, this architect is transforming Mexico City, one artful building at a time.
Design Issue 19 In Anxious Anticipation The effects of adrenaline are positively pulse-pounding, but the physical whoosh we feel in our bodies actually starts in our brains.
Design Issue 18 Happiness by Design Think more like designers: The strategies employed to create a perfectly proportioned bookshelf can also be used to enhance our personal well-being.
Design Issue 18 Sense in Symmetry From radial swirls to mirror images, the natural world often shows that there’s beauty in balance.
