Kew Gardens’ iconic Palm House will soon close for four years

Do you find moving house a daunting, stressful, time-consuming thing to do? Well, try doing so with 1,300 tropical plants. That’s what staff at Kew Gardens have already started doing ahead of a massive restoration of the attraction’s most iconic glasshouse, which will shut from 2027 for four years.

Originally built in the 1840s, the Palm House is arguably Kew’s most recognisable building – a full-blown horticultural celeb, basically. It was designed to show off tropical plants collected from across the British Empire, and today it’s home to some of the world’s most threatened species. It’s steamy, it’s dramatic, it smells faintly of compost, and soon it’ll be surrounded by scaffolding.

The Palm House’s restoration will see all 16,000 of its window panes replaced with insulated glass, while the iron frame will be stripped and repainted, and the ageing heating system swapped for sustainable alternatives. The goal is to turn the Grade I-listed building into the world’s first net-zero glasshouse of its kind.

And, yes, the plants are already on the move – though thankfully they’re not going far. Kew’s team of plant pros are lovingly relocating them to a set of temporary glasshouses elsewhere on site. Some of the species are extinct in the wild, so no pressure – they just have to keep them alive for the next few years. Once the works are done, the whole collection will be triumphantly returned home.

Kew expects the construction to last four years, with the Palm House reopening in the early 2030s. Until then, the rest of the gardens and glasshouses will stay open – so you’ve still got time to get your fill of rainforest humidity without leaving London. Or stepping onto the Central line in July.

Time Out’s ultimate guide to visiting Kew Gardens.

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