Kew is of immense importance both as the home of introduced plants which have then become used in Britain and also as a reservoir of plant-types and gene-bank for the rest of the world. The uniqueness of its collections is a direct product of Britain's role as a trading and imperial power in the 18th and 19th centuries. The botanic garden was founded in 1759 by Princess Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales in front of her Orangery.
The surrounding areas were pleasure and kitchen gardens dating from 1729 and associated with Kew Palace (the Dutch House) and her own royal residence. On her death in 1772 the estates were merged and the botanic gardens enlarged with many new exotic plants being brought in particularly from the Americas. In 1841 the gardens were made into a public research institute. The importance of Kew lies not only in the survival of a unique assemblage of 18th and 19th century garden buildings, but in its supreme collection of living plants, over 50,000 taxa collected from all the world.