This year Kew Gardens celebrates its 250th anniversary, but quite apart from the plants, Kew became a world centre for studying the weather.

"He is the best of Kings, the liberal protector of every art and science," hailed the astronomer William Herschel about George III. Ten years after Kew Gardens was founded, George III had an astronomical observatory built to observe the passage of Venus between the Sun and Earth on 3 June, 1769. The Kew Observatory went on to become important for astronomy and also set London's official time, before the meridian and timekeeping were moved to the Greenwich Observatory.

From 1773, Kew became one of the earliest sites for weather measurements. Over the years the observatory increasingly became used for meteorology, as well as observations of the Earth's magnetic field and seismology. It became a national centre for testing and calibrating weather instruments, and launched the invention of automatic weather instruments. In 1867 Kew became the central weather station for the newly formed Meteorological Office. Kew took on research into electrical fields in rain clouds and thunderstorms, the effects of atmospheric pollution, particularly smoke and dust, the formation of mists and fogs, and measuring visibility. But the Kew Observatory became too small and the Met Office moved out in 1980. A small weather station in Kew Gardens remains part of the Met Office network.

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