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Kew's Temperate House is falling down

Temperate-house (Main) News today that the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world may have to close as it will soon be falling down.

An independent review of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, reveals that The Temperate House is in need of prompt restoration without which it could pose safety risks to public, and staff, in the next two or three years. The report also points out that there’s a huge backlog of other maintenance and repair on Kew’s buildings that will cost £80million/$125million to put right.

So, basically, they have not been spending what they should on regular maintenance. Someone needs a bollocking seems to have been derelict in their duty, over the years.

Twice as large as the more famous Palm House at Kew, The Temperate House was completed in 1899 and is home to a huge collection of plants which are too tender to be grown outside but which don’t require the humid and hot tropical conditions of The Palm House.

As it happens, I remember the last time The Temperate House went through a dramatic restoration. For what seemed like years in the late 1970s, I think, most of the plants were moved out and hard hats were compulsory. Clearly, this spectacular building, with its high observation platform from which to look down on the plants, has been neglected since.

But where’s the money to come from? Not, please by upping the entrance fee. At present it costs £13/$20 to get in – that’s for just one person. With car parking on top. Enough to deter a huge number of people from visiting. And take a look at this video to see how much there is to see.

Kew Gardens HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Shows my age again, I suppose, but when I was a kid it cost just a penny to get in and collecting the money cost more than people paid. There was even a plan to close the gardens to the public altogether – Kew is a scientific institution, after all - and so make significant savings on all that has to be done to accommodate the visiting public. Instead the price went up – and up and up.

So what’s the answer? A tricky question in these hard times. The report suggests that grants have not kept pace with the increased rate of grant help to museums – good – and that Kew should raise more than the existing, very impressive, £23.4million/$36.5million from commercial activities. The trick is to balance commerce and science – even assuming Kew can compete successfully for the commercial revenue being sought by so many other venues.

Looks like grants, then. And don’t forget that increased grants not only means repairing buildings, it means hiring more people. Which with unemployment so high, is exactly what we need. Kew’s own stimulus package, if you like, both to restore the gardens and provide jobs. Sounds like a good deal to me.

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