THERE is exciting news for plant lovers, keen gardeners and children doing plant-related homework.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which has its headquarters at Wisley, has launched its online Digital Collections, which enables everyone to view 10,000 of its treasures – for free.

Digital Collections spans more than 500 years of gardening history and science, and the information is available to students, researchers and the public for the first time.

It includes dried specimens, images and paintings of garden plants past and present, as well as treasures from the RHS’s rare book collection such as the first book written in English for urban gardeners and its earliest list of plants for sale, dating back to 1612.

Many of the items are rare, fragile or valuable, so would not otherwise be accessible to the public. Currently there are 9,542 library items including books, photographs and artworks, and 458 dried plant specimens such as pressed flowers.

The RHS project was made possible with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, so it’s thanks to National Lottery players.

The society will continue to upload items, ensuring the site constantly gets bigger and richer as more content is uploaded. There will be a particular focus on uploading materials that are unique to the RHS collections and resources important to researchers.

Items that support exhibitions in RHS Garden Wisley’s “Old Laboratory” are also accessible. The building recently opened to the public for the first time with exhibitions revealing the learning and experimentation that took place there – as reported here in the News & Mail last month.

The treasures available in the RHS Digital Collections include thousands of beautiful botanical artworks such as orchid portraits, and an account book by English gardener and landscape architect, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the most famous figure in the history of the English landscape garden style.

The book lists his famous aristocratic and royal clients, including the Duke of Marlborough (Blenheim), the Duke of Northumberland (Sion Park), Henry Herbert (Highclere, Hampshire), Sir George Colebrooke (Gatton, Surrey) and “His Majesty the King”.

Fiona Davison, RHS head of libraries and exhibitions, said: “The items in our Digital Collections chart the history of gardens and cultivated plants in the UK, highlighting the important role they play in our lives and the benefits they bring to welling, nature and our planet.

“We are delighted to be opening up a whole world of botanical and horticultural treasures to everyone, especially as many of these items will not have been seen by the public.”

The project has been supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, whose spokesman Stuart McLeod said: “This platform will provide people from all walks of life with access to this wonderful horticultural heritage and allow them to embrace it in a new way.”

For more information and to access the RHS Digital Collections visit https://collections.rhs.org.uk.