Kew’s Art of Plant Evolution opens in London on 5 March

A& Arts & Entertainment Desk 2026-09-10 18:27 3 min read

The Art of Plant Evolution will run daily at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in Kew Gardens, London, from 5 March to 5 September 2027. Entry to the exhibition is included with admission to Kew Gardens, with a £1 Universal Credit ticket and a £10 ticket available for visitors aged 16 to 29.

Online pre-booking through Kew is recommended for the best-value visit. The exhibition is aimed at a broad audience, but its combination of detailed artworks, scientific research and historical objects should particularly appeal to botanical art, natural history and plant science enthusiasts.

Dates, venue and admission at a glance

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has not listed a separate exhibition start time. The supplied announcement also contains no specific accessibility information or detailed transport guidance beyond confirming that the gallery is inside Kew Gardens.

More than 150 artworks follow the Plant Tree of Life

The exhibition brings together more than 150 works by 80 contemporary botanical artists represented in the Shirley Sherwood Collection. Artists featured include Coral Guest, Paul Jones, Susannah Blaxill, Phansakdi Chakkaphak, Rosie Sanders and Mariko Imai.

Rather than arranging the works only by artist or visual style, the gallery will mirror the evolutionary groupings used in the Plant Tree of Life. Visitors will move through groups including algae, mosses, ferns and flowering plants, seeing how botanical artists record the diversity found within plant families.

The structure connects the art directly with Kew Science. Since 2015, researchers have been building a flowering Plant Tree of Life using genomic sequencing to map relationships between plants. According to Kew, the wider Plant and Fungal Tree of Life project involves more than 500 scientists and has sampled 96% of the 13,700 flowering-plant genera, drawing on over 20,000 samples.

That research helps scientists identify species and investigate how plants adapted to environmental change over millions of years. The exhibition translates this complex genetic work into a visual route through the major branches of plant evolution.

Darwin letters and fossils add a historical trail

Contemporary paintings and drawings will be shown alongside material from scientific collections. Rarely displayed objects include letters written by Charles Darwin in 1833 during the Beagle voyage and his hand-drawn sketch of Gavilea patagonica, an orchid he collected in the field.

Fossils loaned by the Natural History Museum will also appear. Together, these objects show how careful observation and illustration supported botanical research long before modern DNA sequencing became available.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE, with contributions from Kew research leader Professor William Baker and Smithsonian scientist and curator emeritus Dr John Kress. It revisits a 2009 exhibition with additional artworks and scientific findings developed through Kew’s international research partnerships.

Visitors interested in another garden-based art programme can also read about Oxford’s In Bloom exhibition at the Ashmolean.

A garden route and accompanying book extend the visit

The subject continues outside the gallery in Kew’s Agius Evolution Garden. Its garden rooms represent different branches of the Tree of Life, with an audio guide produced in partnership with Bloomberg Connects.

Kew Publishing will release a second edition of The Art of Plant Evolution to accompany the exhibition. Written by John Kress and Shirley Sherwood, the book follows the APG V Plant Tree of Life and explores more than 170 species through works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection.

Anyone planning to attend can choose a date between 5 March and 5 September 2027 and pre-book admission online. The exhibition itself does not require an additional ticket beyond admission to Kew Gardens.

Source: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Press and Media

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Dates, venue, admission information and exhibition highlights were checked against the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew press release.

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• Confirmed the exhibition runs daily from 5 March to 5 September 2027.
• Confirmed the venue as the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens.
• Checked that exhibition entry is included with garden admission and noted the two advertis...
• Kept the opening time, accessibility and detailed transport information unspecified becaus...

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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Press and Media

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Kew, London

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2026-09-10 18:27

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Article contextPeople & topics3#2

Shirley SherwoodWilliam BakerJohn Kress

#botanical art#London Exhibitions

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