The RHS Lindley Library is the world’s largest and finest horticultural library collection telling the story of the UK’s gardens and the origins and uses of its estimated 400,000 garden plants. The collection comprises books, art, archives, photographs and artefacts with the majority housed in the RHS’ Victorian headquarters on Vincent Square in London.
Owing to work required at Vincent Square to bring the building up to date and ensure adequate conditions for our collection, some of our rare and fragile items will be temporarily moved to offsite storage.
During this time, library staff will be working hard to minimise disruption to users. Our modern lending collection will remain onsite, our ground floor reading room will remain open and our exciting events programme will continue. We will also continue to welcome researchers to view our 19th and 20th-century books, pamphlets and periodicals by appointment.
For all other collection types – archives, rare books, artworks, ephemera, objects, nursery catalogues – please contact the library team two weeks in advance to ensure access to the material you need. It may take longer for items being temporarily stored off site to be recalled and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
We will be sharing an update on the status of our services in spring. In the meantime we are continuing with our long term project to catalogue and digitise the collection to make it more accessible, prioritising those that will be moved to safe storage. You can search 49,000 items already uploaded .
To keep up-to-date with this project please sign up to the .
