1. The Rhododendron Dell _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. The Wild Garden in Spring 8 3. The Lake 18 4. The Queen’s Cottage 30 5. In Queen’s Cottage Gardens 34 6. Looking up the Thames 42 7. The Pagoda 58 8. The Water-Lily Pond 64 9. The Palace 78 10. In the Italian Garden 90 11. The Ruined Arch 96 12. The Azaleas 102 13. The Peonies 108 14. The Palm Trees and Main Gate 112 15. The Rhododendron Walk 124 16. The Poppy Beds 138 17. The Rosary 146 18. Wild Hyacinths 152 19. In the Rock Garden 158 20. The Palm House 164 21. The Greenhouse 172 22. Wild Flowers in the Beech Woods 176 23. The Lake, looking South 198 24. The Herbaceous Ground 200 KEW GARDENS I ROYAL RESIDENCES The most conspicuous feature of Kew is its Pagoda, from many points seen towering over the well-wooded flat watered by a winding reach of the Thames. Such an outlandish structure bears up the odd name in giving a suggestion of China, not contradicted by the elaborate cultivation around, where all seems market-garden that is not park, buildings, groves or flower-beds. Yet the name, of old written as _Kaihough_, _Kaiho_, _Kayhoo_, and in other quaint forms--for which _quay_ of the _howe_ or _hough_ has been guessed as original--belongs to a thoroughly English parish, whose exotic vegetation, nursed upon a poor soil, came to be twined among many national memories. These, indeed, are most closely packed about what may be called the willow-plate pattern period of our history, when a true-blue conservatism had the affectation of letting itself be spangled with foreign amenities and curiosities, jumbled together without much regard for perspective or natural surroundings.