42 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



Hugh Portman. Records tell that it was he who 

 owned the land upon which now stands the pic- 

 turesque but unpretending red-brick house, pro- 

 bably built during the early years of the Stuart 

 dynasty, still known as Kew Palace, and which 

 is now thrown open to the crowds of visitors who 

 throng the gardens, as an interesting relic of the 

 past. It was here that Queen Charlotte, in her 

 widowhood, lived and died. Her love of plants 

 had always been remarkable, of which we have 

 the incidental proof that about the year 1788, when 

 a famous herbarium was sold after the death of 

 its owner and maker, Dr Lightfoot, one of the 

 first members of the Linnaean Society, it was pur- 

 chased by George III. for a hundred guineas as 

 a present for the queen. This herbarium remained 

 at Frogmore for many years, and may be in exist- 

 ence still, for dried plants have a faculty of long 

 outlasting the fleeting human lives of whose labours 

 they serve as a memento. To the end Queen 

 Charlotte retained the keen interest she had always 

 taken in the exotic trees and plants which in her 

 time were already becoming famous in the royal 

 botanic collection. 



But we must look back to an earlier day still 

 for the real beginning of Kew Gardens in their 

 entirety as we now know them. Kew House, pic- 

 turesquely situated in grounds of considerable acre- 

 age, and possessing even then an arboretum which 

 was supposed to be the first of the kind established 

 in Europe, had attracted the fancy of Frederick, 

 Prince of Wales, and here he lived and occupied 

 himself in extending and laying out the surround- 



