The nearly 180-year-old tropical glasshouse is usually packed full of plants – and very humid – so the remarkable structure of the building is often hard to appreciate. As part of a once-in-a-generation restoration project, staff are currently moving all the plants from the glasshouse into temporary homes.

And for a few months next year, visitors will be able to step into the empty glasshouse and see it as it hasn’t been seen since it was first built.

Ahead of that, Kew Gardens has launched an appeal to help fund the restoration project.

They are already about halfway towards the £66 million needed, with money already secured from philanthropists, grants and individual donors. Kew is now asking the public to contribute by sponsoring a pane of glass, supporting a tropical plant species or making a donation.

Opened in 1848, the Palm House has spent almost 180 years maintaining the hot, humid conditions its plants need. Those same conditions have taken their toll on the building, which now requires extensive conservation work.

Its significance extends well beyond being one of Kew’s most recognisable landmarks. Built between 1844 and 1848 by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner, the Palm House pushed the possibilities of iron and glass construction. Techniques borrowed from shipbuilding helped create its sweeping curved structure, which resembles an upturned ship’s hull.

The Grade I listed building stretches for more than 110 metres, with a central roof rising around 20 metres above the ground.

David Attenborough calls it “a building like no other” saying that “together, [the plants in the Palm House] constitute a unique global rainforest, a living laboratory where we can watch and observe the fascinating ways in which rainforest plants interest and behave.”

Inside is a living collection of more than 1,000 tropical and subtropical plant species, including rare and threatened plants and species that are now extinct in the wild. Among its botanical treasures is an Eastern Cape giant cycad that arrived at Kew in 1775 — decades before the glasshouse was built — and which Kew identifies as the world’s oldest potted plant.

The collection supports research into conservation, biodiversity loss and food security, making the restoration an effort to protect both a historic building and the plants on which scientific work depends.

The restoration plans combine conservation of its Victorian architecture with changes intended to reduce the environmental cost of maintaining an indoor tropical climate. They include replacement glazing, renewable heating systems and rainwater harvesting tanks, with Kew aiming to create the first carbon-neutral glasshouse of its kind.

Richard Deverell, director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said: “It is a building that has inspired wonder for almost 180 years, but its future cannot be taken for granted.”

He said securing half the funding was an important milestone, but public support would help protect the building and its collection for future generations.

Kew describes the campaign as its largest-ever public fundraising appeal. Donations totalling up to £300,000 will be matched, while plant sponsorship options include Clay’s hibiscus and the giant dioon.

Supporters can find out more and contribute through Kew’s Palm House appeal.

The Palm House will close in February 2027 for the final phase of plant removal and will reopen in the summer to let visitors see it empty before closing fully for renovation in autumn 2027.

Details of the empty Palm House opening will be announced closer to the date.

The renovation is estimated to take 3 to 4 years.

Featuring work by 11 artists, the collection ranges from seemingly random assemblages of metalwork to a tree that’s easy to miss but worth seeking out to pointless slabs of stone in the ground.

The black palm is worth seeking out because when you look closely, you’ll see that the leaves are all made from old car tyres.

Elsewhere is a rather sci-fi looking structure, a door frame that looks utterly pointless, some stone slabs with instructions to form a pose, presumably because the artist couldn’t be bothered to do anything, and a metal worm rising up out of the ground.

One of the more interesting is a cluster of three uprights that have a sort of futuristic Mexican look to them. And a structurally very impressive metallic flower has sprouted at the end of the walking trail. Like most walking trails of art, some is good, some meh, and some blugh.

The display can be found in the southeastern corner of The Regent’s Park and is there until 1st November 2026. It’s free to visit.

Details here.

Prices below are for adults – children and family rates are also available. You can probably see the top half of the display for free from outside most venues, but since many raise money for local charities, pay for tickets if you can.

And, yes, there are a few displays in October.

Friday 16th October

Saturday 31st October

Sunday 1st November

Thursday 5th November

Friday 6th November

Saturday 7th November

Sunday 8th November

The route includes a Rabbit Hole, the Caterpillar’s Den, a Cheshire Cat forest, a Mad Hatter tea party and the Queen’s Court. It ends with a section about Carroll and the book’s cultural legacy, followed by a 360-degree projection show.

Stepping into the Rabbit House, visitors will see Alice change size in this striking scene before losing themselves in the Forest of the Cheshire Cat and arriving at the iconic Mad Tea Party where the table comes alive with illusions and characters caught in a loop of madness.

Visitors will also encounter a series of narrative “Curiosity Keys” interludes throughout the experience, hosted by English comedian, writer and broadcaster Paul Taylor, offering insights into Alice’s world.

Tickets start at £26 for adults and £19 for children aged four and over. Family tickets for groups of four to six start at £20 per person.

Tickets are on sale here.

Dock X is about a 10 minute walk from Canada Water station on the Jubilee line and London Overground.

It was commissioned by the Docklands Light Railway’s (DLR) operator, KeolisAmey, as gifts for staff, so you’re not going to see it in shops, but it’s still been done to a high standard, with a lot of DLR touches to the board game.

Community Chest offers lots of rewards for providing good customer care and running the service on time. Go to Jail remains intact – presumably for the fare dodgers.

Free parking is now waiting at the platform.

The gameplace pieces are still the classic ones from the original game, so you’ll still be a dog or a hat, and not a cluster of DLR trains going around the board.

A KeolisAmey spokesperson confirmed the game was commissioned for their staff, and they don’t plan to order more or sell them. So, short of getting a bonus as an employee, you’ll probably only see them if someone decides to sell theirs via those well-known second-hand websites.

Working clockwise from GO:

The game was created by The Dice Guys.

All photos are from my own copy of the game, from one of those second-hand websites.

Today’s London news round-up:

At noon today, Mon 5th October, tenants, local residents, and community leaders will stage a rally outside City Hall to urge Mayor Sadiq Khan to block a controversial redevelopment in Brixton. Brixton Buzz

Meet the 14-year-old uncovering London’s lost history Positive News

Dagenham homeowner ordered to pay over £30k after subdividing property without permission Barking Star

Central London has been hit by a major power cut that stretched across dozens of postcodes and left swathes of the City in darkness. City AM

A driver has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving after a 17-year-old e-bike rider was killed in Bullsmoor last night (Sunday 4th). Enfield Dispatch

A failed asylum seeker who tried to break into the Israeli embassy in London to carry out a knife attack has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years. BBC News

Barnet Council warns of £200m forecast budget gap by 2029 Times Series

London man sues landlord for £100k for demolishing his flat while he was asleep inside Independent

London will be run like “Tokyo on steroids” if Reform UK win the 2028 Mayoral election, the party’s candidate has claimed. Southwark News

Coco Robots Begin UK Deliveroo Service at London Canary Wharf Unite AI

‘People are deserting it’: why are London mansions struggling to sell? The Guardian

Batman takes over London: Bank transformed into snowy Gotham City as sequel films in capital Standard

Holborn & St Pancras by-election: Something for everyone, but not much for some OnLondon

And from ianVisits:

One rule to ride them all: Mayor plans London-wide dockless bike regime

London Museum’s first exhibition goes back to the city’s Roman beginnings

Pontoon Dock DLR station upgrade gets underway

An ancient scroll created to protect Korea makes a rare visit to London

No trains between Staines and Windsor during the October half-term

London’s Alleys: Ashburton Place, Mayfair, W1

Things to do in London tomorrow

Pearls, Sugar, & Tobacco Flowers: English Queens in an Atlantic World
Greenwich
Join Lauren Working to explore what queenly portraits, classical architecture, and the orangery at Queen’s House, Greenwich can reveal about English history and heritage in this age of expansion.

Radical poster design
Holborn
Step into the world of radical poster design with graphic designer Craig Yamey and explore how graphic design can be used as a powerful tool for ethics, activism and social change.

New Ruins with Alastair Bonnett
Clerkenwell
Join author, academic and map-expert Alastair Bonnett in conversation with the editor of The Geographical Graeme Gourlay to discuss his latest book ‘New Ruins’.

This free news roundup is delivered at 5pm daily via Substack – sign up for free here.

The proposed framework would allow Transport for London (TfL) to manage bike numbers, set parking and maintenance standards, and require operators to share data to help monitor compliance and plan services. It would also seek to improve connections with public transport and introduce more consistent enforcement across borough boundaries.

Dockless bike schemes are currently managed through separate arrangements with individual London boroughs, but new legislation being planned by the government could give TfL statutory powers to establish a licensing framework.

However, secondary legislation and government guidance are still required, with the Department for Transport (DfT) expected to consult on the details.

The Mayor, Lord Khan, is urging the government to move quickly, while TfL develops its plans with London’s boroughs.

“The ‘Wild West’ approach to dockless e-bikes cannot continue,” he said. “While these services are helping thousands more Londoners to cycle, their rapid growth has also brought challenges around safety, inconsiderate parking, and the lack of data needed to properly manage them.”

Alongside tackling pavement clutter, the proposed scheme would set standards for vehicle maintenance, rider education and responsible riding. The Mayor also wants transparent pricing for customers, fair fees for boroughs and continued investment from operators.

There is no implementation date yet. TfL says it will publish more detailed proposals later this year, alongside measures intended to improve services in the meantime.

According to TfL, daily cycling journeys in London have risen by 43 per cent since 2019, while dockless bikes accounted for more than one in ten cycle journey stages in 2024.

The Mayor and TfL are already working to address parking issues, including providing £1.7m to London boroughs this year to fund micromobility parking spaces, with over 36,000 spaces on our streets already. Later this year, TfL will publish further details of the Mayor’s vision for dockless bikes alongside other plans to make services work better in the shorter term.

The museum will open in November with a permanent collection on display, but in Spring 2027 will open its first temporary exhibition, exploring Roman London’s first 50 years.

At the heart of the new exhibition will be the Bloomberg Collection, a trove of more than 14,000 significant Roman artefacts unearthed during excavations for Bloomberg’s European headquarters and new Mithraeum between 2012 and 2014. Bloomberg Philanthropies later gave the collection to the London Museum in 2025.

The collection includes the remains of wax tablets, one of which contains the earliest known reference to London, a full 50 years before Tacitus wrote about London in his Annals, as well as the early iron stylus that were used to write on the wax-filled wooden writing tablets

One has an inscription, which makes the stylus very rare, and even so, it was worn away in places. Classicist and epigrapher Dr Roger Tomlin later examined and translated it. It reads (in English)…

‘I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift
with a sharp point that you may remember me.
I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give)
as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty.’

In other words: the stylus is a gift to remind the recipient of its sender while the sender acknowledges that it is a cheap gift and wishes that they could have given more. It is the Roman equivalent of ‘I went to Rome and all I got you was this pen’.

Jackie Keily, the exhibition’s lead curator, said the waterlogged ground had preserved objects that would otherwise have been lost.

“From these objects, we can begin to picture the intimate and everyday experiences of Londinium’s ancient inhabitants,” she said. “This was a time of loss, upheaval and hardship but also hope, opportunity and new beginnings.”

The free exhibition will also be the first opportunity for visitors to enter a network of long-abandoned vaults beneath Smithfield’s Victorian General Market, rediscovered during work to convert the market into the museum’s new home. The exhibition’s underground setting was itself an unexpected discovery. In 2019, builders broke through a wall and found an 800-square-metre network of vaults, thought to have been used for storage by the market and nearby railway.

The spaces have since been converted to accommodate exhibitions, experiences and events.

Housed in the museum’s new subterranean galleries, the new Roman exhibition will also happen to be situated at roughly the original Roman street level – which is a happy coincidence.

London Museum director Sharon Ament said: “When we rediscovered the vaults, we were determined to open them up. They are so specific, so evocative, so mysterious, we saw their potential straight away.”

London Museum’s new Smithfield home opens on 28th November 2026. The Roman London exhibition will open in spring 2027 and will be free to visit.

Pontoon Dock opened in 2005, when the surrounding Royal Docks were far less populated. Its platforms sit high above street level, leaving passengers to climb stairs or choose between two lifts. Many passengers choose the lifts to avoid the stairs, increasing demand on equipment needed by passengers who cannot use the steps.

The upgrade will add two escalators between the street and an enlarged mezzanine, then four more between the mezzanine and the platforms. The existing stairs and lifts will remain while the escalators provide another route for passengers able to use them. A glazed structure will enclose the new circulation space, with retail units, operational rooms, landscaping and an improved public square beneath the railway.

The extra capacity is intended to accommodate continued housing growth around the station.

TfL previously forecast that Pontoon Dock’s passenger numbers could rise by about a third by 2041, making access to and from the platforms a greater constraint than the space on trains.

The station upgrade is being 75 percent third-party funded, with contributions from Homes England (the government’s housing and regeneration agency) and the Greater London Authority (GLA), developer contributions from Lendlease and funding from TfL’s Sustainable Housing and Accessibility Fund.

Morgan Sindall says the fixed funding available shaped the design: the team has retained and upgraded existing station infrastructure where possible and simplified finishes to keep costs within budget.

An earlier construction timetable indicated that passengers might be able to use the enlarged station in October 2028. Morgan Sindall’s latest announcement gives a two-and-a-half-year delivery programme from the start of enabling works — so sometime around spring 2029.

The station upgrade plans are by Mott MacDonald, along with Weston Williamson + Partners.

The Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra addresses the Buddhist concept of emptiness, but the document is actually a form of defence – as it was created as an offering seeking divine aid to protect the country from invasion.

It’s one of nearly 200 items that are considered to be the very best of the best of Korean artistic heritage that have gone on display in the British Museum. Although the museum has a permanent Korean gallery, this is also the first large-scale temporary exhibition of Korean heritage in over 40 years.

The exhibition is also almost a private art gallery, as most of the objects on display were owned by former Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee and later donated to the South Korean nation. The collection ranges from tiny porcelain to a giant temple bell, paintings, and even golden shoes people wore when buried.

One of the joys of exhibitions is learning about a period of history, and this exhibition spans such a vast period of time that it can only show a few choice treasures for each topic, which feels oddly thin and may miss the emotional hit of a more concentrated collection.

Each object is individually impressive, but the collection as a whole didn’t really leave me buzzing. Maybe if there were more text explaining why, for example, a vase with a cloud-and-crane motif belongs in the exhibition, visitors would feel more connected to the objects.

Still, it’s the sort of exhibition that you’d probably look back on later and be pleased you went to, if only to say you saw the objects on a rare visit to the UK.

The exhibition, Korea, is at the British Museum until the end of January 2027.

• Standard Ticket: £20
• Concessions: £18
• National Art Pass: £10
• Student & 16-18: £18
• Under 16s (with Ticketed Adult): Free

Details here.