The herbarium at Kew Gardens

From Saturday, visitors will be able to visit the world's first gallery dedicated entirely to botanical art when the Shirley Sherwood gallery opens at Kew Gardens in London Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Most of the artworks are stored in Kew Gardens' herbarium, a large building containing a maze of cabinets housing a vast collection of plant specimens Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Tucked away from the public gaze, the herbarium is at the heart of all Kew does Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Within it are some 7m dried botanical specimens Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

The herbarium is also home to the personal collections of esteemed scientists and explorers including Charles Darwin and David Livingstone Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

The Shirley Sherwood gallery will allow Kew to display a tiny fraction of the art it owns. Its archives contain more than 200,000 items of botanical art Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Shirley Sherwood, whose name has been given to the new gallery, began her personal collection in 1990 and now has more than 700 works, with more than 100 in this inaugural exhibition Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Kew does not know the full extent of its stock, with archivists only about halfway through the painstaking task of cataloguing the items held in its stores Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

The growth in interest in botanical art has been fuelled by the increasing popularity of gardening, as well as the heightened collective awareness of all things environmental Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

Specimens in the herbarium are meticulously filed in systematic order, according to the characteristics of their flowers, leaves, stems, fruit and roots Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance

The plan is to have three different exhibitions a year, with the inaugural display of highlights from Sherwood's collection of contemporary work and Kew's own extensive collection, running until October Photograph: Martin Godwin/freelance