Kew Gardens' Temperate House restored - in pictures
After five years, 10,000 plants uprooted and replanted, 15,000 panes of glass replaced, 69,000 sections of metal, stone and timber repaired or replaced, enough scaffolding to stretch the length of the M25, and £41m spent, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world is ready to open its doors again. The Temperate House in Kew Gardens is once again, as Sir David Attenborough describes it, ‘a breathtakingly beautiful space’
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The glasshouse was closed for the works, with a tent structure large enough to cover three Boeing 747 planes enclosing the building in south-west London. The vast project required 112 miles of scaffolding, 5,280 litres of paint and more than 400 people working on it, with the lengthy process of replanting starting in September.
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The Temperate House is the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world still standing.
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Dietes grandiflora, or fairy iris, inside the Temperate House.
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The Temperate House is home to some of the world’s rarest and most threatened plants.
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One of the many species of plants inside the glasshouse.
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Ferns are readied for planting outside.
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The 4,880 sq-metre glasshouse, built in 1860, had been in a state of disrepair, according to officials at the Unesco world heritage site, which attracts more than a million visitors a year.
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Flowers inside the Temperate House.
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More than 69,000 items have been cleaned and replaced in the vast grade I-listed building, which is home to 10,000 plants.
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A bird of paradise flower, Strelitzia reginae, inside the Temperate House.
