Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the story of how a royal pleasure ground became a national scientific garden. From the Victoria Gate it goes to the Palm House of 1844 to 1848, built with shipbuilding techniques, and Museum No. 1, the museum of useful plants, with the story of how cinchona and rubber were carried out of South America to Britain's colonies. Then the Temperate House, the Marianne North Gallery, built in 1879 for more than 800 of her paintings, William Chambers's Great Pagoda of 1762 with its restored dragons, Queen Charlotte's thatched cottage and the Treetop Walkway eighteen metres up. Last, the Hive from the 2015 Milan Expo, driven by a live bee colony, the Princess of Wales Conservatory with its ten climate zones, Kew Palace, the Dutch House of 1631 where George III's family spent their summers, and, outside the gates on Kew Green, St Anne's Church and Gainsborough's tomb.
12 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 134 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 27 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Victoria Gate, The Palm House, Museum No. 1 and the economic botany collection, The Temperate House.
Marianne North Gallery, The Great Pagoda, Queen Charlotte's Cottage, Treetop Walkway.
The Hive, Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew Palace, St Anne's Church, Kew Green.
Decimus Burton and Richard Turner's glasshouse of 1844 to 1848, shaped like an upturned hull, with some 16,000 panes of glass.
The museum of useful plants, and Kew's part in carrying cinchona and rubber from South America to Britain's colonies.
The gallery she paid for in 1879 to hold more than 800 of her paintings, with tea and coffee plants painted on the doors.
William Chambers's ten-storey tower of 1762, its 80 dragons now restored, and its floors once holed for wartime bomb tests.
The UK pavilion from the 2015 Milan Expo, 170,000 aluminium parts that light up and hum with the activity of a live bee colony.
The Dutch House built in 1631 for Samuel Fortrey, summer home of George III and Queen Charlotte, who died here in 1818.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 12 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 12 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Kew Gardens — the Glasshouses, the Pagoda, the Palace and the Plant Hunters, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
12 narration points, including Victoria Gate, The Palm House, The Temperate House, Marianne North Gallery and Queen Charlotte's Cottage. That is about 27 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 12 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.