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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
One of the world’s most famous greenhouses needs renovations, but it won’t be easy. How can its tropical tenants move without dying in the process? We’ll dive in today.
First, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Policy: Quebec puts the brakes on emissions targets, citing threats to jobs and economy
- Wildlife: Dear birdwatchers, it’s ‘leave the owls alone’ season
- Olympics: Stelvio is a terrifying ski course – icy, fast and steep. Here’s how the Italian slope will keep Olympic racers on their toes
- Conservation: B.C. shelves Indigenous heritage conservation measures after strong political backlash
- Mining: B.C. Premier basks in mining expansions as sector proves to be important ally for NDP government
- Energy: Alberta moves ahead with direct bitumen sales plan
A deeper dive
An external view of the famous Palm House at Kew Gardens.Justin Griffiths-Williams/The Globe and Mail
How to renovate the most famous tropical greenhouse in the world
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at London’s Kew greenhouse, which is forcing its residents to make like trees and leave.
A 177-year-old glass and wrought-iron Palm House is the centrepiece of London’s Kew Gardens, where feature writer Ian Brown paid a visit for a story about a massive renovation under way.
The Palm House is one of the largest and most popular curated collections of tropical plants anywhere in the world, he writes. It’s made up of 1,300 plants and 935 species in the glass house alone, a third of which are threatened, not to mention the living botanical record of the British Empire’s rise and fall.
But the renovation is more than just updating the building, which is a feat itself, especially since the goal is to transform the Victorian relic into the prototype of the world’s first carbon-neutral glass conservatory. To do this, they will strip and clean and repaint and refurbish – replacing the complicated heating and watering colonics and its 16,000 panes of glass.
But then there’s the plants.
The famous Palm House at Kew Gardens is closing in 2027 for major renovations. The palms will be temporarily relocated until the work is finished.Justin Griffiths-Williams/The Globe and Mail
You first have to move all the vegetation, including the ones that are more than eight metres tall. But very few of the rare and valuable tropical plants in the glass house can survive outside, even in England’s mild-but-getting-hotter climate. So they will need to be relocated into warm, moist temporary quarters known as “decant houses.”
On top of that, they will need to grow backups, in case the transplants don’t take.
All that will take five years.
Will Spoelstra, the Palm House’s supervisor, has worked at Kew for more than a decade, and has been planning the logistics of the renovation for several years. But the physical transfer of the plants began only last fall.
The palms you can only really propagate from seed. Several species are impossible to move because they are upholstered in piercing spines. Cycads for example – the most common plant on the planet back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth – are not a plant you want to accidentally kill.
Once the plants are relocated, the physical renovation of the storied edifice can begin.Justin Griffiths-Williams/The Globe and Mail
The plants represent other histories. The building’s most famous residents are 175 species of palm that inspired centuries of exploitation as well as the Western world’s obsession with everything warm and exotic.
If it all goes as planned, Ian writes, the Palm House will transform from a monument to the glory of imperialism and empire, into a practical example of what we can do to reverse the effects of our careless ambition – an international call to climate-change action.
What else you missed
- Weekend storm hobbles airports with flurry of flight cancellations and delays
- Australia culls ‘aggressive’ dingoes found circling young Canadian woman’s body
Opinion and analysis
Why I choose to raise my family in Attawapiskat
The land, you see, is the great equalizer. It is the “prepolitical” space. When you are out on the land, the politics of the Prime Minister do not matter. The budget deficit does not matter. What matters is your competence, your respect for the environment, and your ability to work with your hands to survive.
— Adrian Sutherland, author and recording artist from Attawapiskat on James Bay
I finally ditched my car and learned to live without it
I’d like to tell you that I took decisive action to help save our environment by selling the car and learning to love public transit, but the truth is a bit messier.
— David A.B. Murray
Business and investing
Severe weather caused more than $2.4-billion in insured damage in 2025
Insured damages caused by severe weather last year topped $2.4-billion, the Insurance Bureau of Canada says.
According to calculations by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., the March, 2025 ice storm in Ontario and Quebec topped the list of most expensive weather events last year, followed by May wildfires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and storms across the Prairies in August. Flooding in Southern British Columbia and parts of Alberta added to insured damage totals last year.
Photo of the week
A woman tries to sweep snow off her van after a massive snowstorm hit Toronto on Jan. 26, 2026.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Guides and Explainers
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- The environmental cost of winter road salt
- Exoplanet exploration
- In 2025, glacier loss reshaped landscapes
- Canada’s Coast Guard put to the test
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