“Kew Garden” | FLOWER: Soul Blossoming In Nature

Hello guys,

Growing up in a tropical country I was inseparable from the world of plant and flowers. I believe

Every Flower is a Soul Blossoming in Nature

I learned that no matter how hard it struggles, a flower doesn’t think of competing with another flower next to it. It just blooms brilliantly.

Today’s place is the best place in London to learn about the beauty and uniqueness of flower. Home for the Beautiful blossoming soul in Nature Kew Gardens.

Located in Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, United Kingdom, Kew Gardens is the world’s largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK.

The Kew site consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens, library, gallery and botanical glasshouses, 4 Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

Kew’s living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over 7,000,000 preserved plant specimens.

The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants.

In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

It was an Interesting Huge garden with some object of interest, Here’s a drop down of the main attractions and what to expect from it:

• Treetop walkway:  Opened in 2008. This walkway is 18 metres (59 ft) high and 200 metres (660 ft) long and takes visitors into the tree canopy of a woodland glade. Visitors can ascend and descend by stairs or by a lift. The floor of the walkway is made of perforated metal and flexes as it is walked upon. The entire structure sways in the wind.

• Rhizotron: Opened at the same time as the “treetop walkway”, The rhizotron is essentially a single gallery containing a set of large bronze abstract castings which contain LCD screens that carry repeating loops of information about the life of trees.

• The Sackler Crossing Bridge: Opened in May 2006, this bridge made from granite and bronze designed by Buro Happold and John Pawson. It crossed the lake and named in honour of philanthropists Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler.

• Alpine House: Open in March 2006, it was the third version of an alpine house since 1887.  The new places features a set of automatically operated blinds together with a system that blows a continuous stream of cooling air over the plants. It was home for Kew’s collection of Alpine plants (The alpine house can only host around 200 plants at a time) so the ones on the show are regularly rotated.

• Nash Conservatory: Originally designed for Buckingham Palace, this was moved to Kew in 1836 by King William IV. With an abundance of natural light, the building is used various exhibitions, weddings, and private events. It is also now used to exhibit the winners of the photography competition.

• The Orangery: The Orangery was designed by Sir William Chambers, and was completed in 1761. It was found to be too dark for its intended purpose of growing citrus plants and they were moved out in 1841. This place currently used as a restaurant.

• Palm House: Was a glass house built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-founder Richard Turner, shaped in a space frame of wrought iron arches, held together by horizontal tubular structures containing long prestressed cables that support its glass panes. It’s 19m high central nave is surrounded by a walkway at 9m height, allowing visitors a closer look upon the palm tree crowns. Under this building, you could found the Aquatic plant room that displays some marine specimen such as algae.

• The Princess of Wales Conservatory: Was opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales in commemoration of her predecessor Augusta’s associations with Kew. The conservatory houses ten computer-controlled micro-climatic zones, with the bulk of the greenhouse volume composed of Dry Tropics and Wet Tropics plants such as orchids, water lilies, cacti, lithops, carnivorous plants and bromeliads.

• Temperate House: Is a greenhouse that has twice the floor area of the Palm House and is the world’s largest surviving Victorian glass structure. When in use it contained plants and trees from all the temperate regions of the world.

• The Waterlily House: is the hottest and most humid of the houses at Kew and contains a large pond with varieties of water lily, surrounded by a display of economically important heat-loving plants. It was built to house the Victoria Amazonica, the largest of the Nymphaeaceae family of water lilies.

• Ornamental Buildings: There was a various decorative building spread across this garden such as The Pagoda, The Chokushi-Mon / Japanese Gateway, The Minka House, Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, and Kew Palace.

• The Shirley Sherwood Gallery: Opened in April 2008, and holds paintings from Kew’s and Dr Shirley Sherwood’s collections, many of which had never been displayed to the public before. It features paintings by artists such as Georg D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers, Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Walter Hood Fitch. The paintings and drawings cycled on a six-monthly basis. The gallery linked to the Marianne North Gallery.

The Marianne North Gallery: Was built in the 1880’s to house the paintings of Marianne North, an MP’s daughter who travelled alone to North and South America, South Africa and many parts of Asia, at a time when women rarely did so, to paint plants. The gallery has 832 of her paintings. The paintings left to Kew by the artist and a condition of the bequest is that the layout of the pictures in the gallery may not alter.

I highly recommended you to visit this place. It is the place where my heart belongs; It was like a one stop refreshment and nourishment for me. Simply because It wasn’t only displaying lovely flowers and plant but it also features some Botanical artwork and give some useful information about plants.

This place is a perfect place for a weekend gateway, not only for you who loves plant but also for you who already have children. It’s another great place for your kids to step away from all of those electronics – gadget and get closer to nature.

It’s an ideal place for photo hunting too since they have so many Interesting objects of interest.

Before I closed today’s post, Here’s some Tips & Tricks for you who planning to visit Kew Gardens:

• To enter this garden, there was an admission fee that you should pay (around £ 15.00 – £ 16.50 for single adult entrance | £ 03.50 for children | £ 19.00 – £ 37.50 for family access) It’s quite a pricey but worth a try. More details about the entry fee could found here.

• To get to this place you could used some transportation.
  • Tube:
    • The nearest station would be Kew Gardens station (It is on District line and the London Overground services on the North London Line) This station is only 400 m along Lichfield Road from the Victoria Gate entrance.
    • Other nearest station would be Kew Bridge station, on the other side of the Thames, 800 metres from the Elizabeth Gate entrance via Kew Bridge, it is served by South West Trains from Clapham Junction and Waterloo.
  • Bus: 
    • London Buses route 65 stop between Ealing Broadway and Kingston stops near the Lion Gate and Victoria Gate entrances
    • Bus route 391 stop between Fulham and Richmond stops near Kew Gardens Station.
    • Bus Routes 237 and 267 stop at Kew Bridge station
  • River Services:
    • operate from Westminster during the summer, staying at Kew Pier, 500 metres from Elizabeth Gate.

• If you’re confused, only download Tube Map London Underground Apps by Visual IT Limited from your google play store. This map could be used offline and give you a direction on how to get to the particular station.

• During the winter months, The Waterlily House is not available to visit.

• Mind that The Temperate House is still under renovation and would complete on 2018, so it might not be available at the moment.

• The gardens Open Every day from Monday – Sunday generally from 10:00 a.m. – 04:15 p.m.

• Spring would be the best month to visit this park since the flower blooms brilliantly during this season.

• For more information about promo and what happening in Kew Gardens can be found at their website here.

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Cheers from London !! 😉

Kind Regards,

Your Edvisored.