London - Kew Gardens

We decided to get out of the city today and take the Tube out to Kew Gardens, a World Heritage Site located south and west of London.   I’ve visited several botanical gardens over the years but this one is most impressive.  The size alone is over 300 acres, it has been in existence for over 250 years, and is quintessentially English.The Palm house was built between 1844 and 1848 and was the first large scale structural use of wrought iron and all of the windows are hand blown glass!

This is the Temperate House was built sometime during the 19^th century  and is now the largest Victorian glass house anywhere. This too is a very large building so one is of the entrance and the other was taken from the Tree Walk later in the day.

  Kew Palace is the smallest of the British palaces.  It was built in 1631 by a Dutch merchant, thus the architecture and the garden behind which was a delight to visit contains only botanicals that are thought to have medicinal qualities and grown during that era.  It was another one of those scenes that just took me back in time.

I was somewhat surprised to discover the Pagoda in the SE corner of Kew Gardens.  It made for a good point of reference though to find our location on the map, several times during the day.  It stands about 163 feet tall and was built about 1762.  We didn’t view it close up.

Below was one of our first stops in touring, the Princess of Wales Conservatory.  Princess Diana opened it in 1987.  This was really beautifully designed because without a map it would have been difficult to locate since it fits into the landscape so well.  It’s a series of glass roofs that are in a stair stepped design and just sitting upon the grounds.  There are 10 different climates represented here with the cooler ones towards the outside and the rest closer to the center. The largest plant zones are the Dry Tropics and the Wet Tropics.  In total, it encompasses nearly 4,500 square feet.  There were many students either drawing or painting plants.

 

The Treetop walkway was Tom’s favorite of course.  This addition opened in 2008, is 660 feet long and about 59 feet tall.  No, it doesn’t sway like a suspension bridge but apparently will move a little if it’s quite windy.  This was another structure that was well designed because without the map it too would have been difficult to find.  The steel supports purposely rusted so they blend right in with the surrounding trees.

We had a nice lunch outdoors at one of the 4 restaurants on the property.  It was so relaxing with a couple of chickens, a duck here and there, just enjoying the beautiful surroundings.  Another little factoid I picked up was that Royal Botanical (Kew) Gardens works with the Missouri Botanical Garden on a complete plant list!