Kew Gardens: a handful of glasshouses with some plants and flowers

Princess of Wales Conservatory

The Royal Botanic Gardens, better known as Kew Gardens, are situated between Richmond upon Thames and Kew; it is a place of sheer beauty and horticultural diversity. I recently became a member, again, and in this blog I would like to show some of the pictures I took during my visits over the last three years. Although there are many different and very colourful flowers and plants to be seen throughout the year, I will concentrate more on the unique buildings in the garden.

 

UNESCO recognised Kew Gardens as a heritage site in 2003 as entry nr.1084 and describes the gardens as follows:

“..Set amongst a series of parks and estates along the River Thames' south-western reaches, this historic landscape garden includes work by internationally renowned landscape architects Bridgeman, Kent, Chambers, Capability Brown and Nesfield illustrating significant periods in garden design from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. The gardens house extensive botanic collections (conserved plants, living plants and documents) that have been considerably enriched through the centuries. Since their creation in 1759, the gardens have made a significant and uninterrupted contribution to the study of plant diversity, plant systematics and economic botany..”

The Princess of Wales Conservatory, as seen left and above, is the newest glasshouse in the garden. It was commissioned in 1982 to replace a group of 26 smaller buildings that were falling into disrepair. It was named after Princess Augusta, founder of Kew, and opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

Inside are various computer controlled zones representing different climates from desert to tropical and rainforest. But a simple bed of Lavender outside already makes a spectacular impression for an innocent (and most of the time plant-ignorant) amateur photographer like me. I do like the modern design of this glasshouse. A modern rock garden with waterfalls outside the conservatory, as seen on the right, makes this part of the garden very pleasant to visit…and take pictures of.

 

If you want to get closer to some of the trees at Kew Gardens, the best way is to climb the 18 meters high Treetop Walkway. That climb and walk around is not for those with vertigo. Because the floor is very transparent and the whole experience is a bit wobbly.

But once you are upstairs and used to the height, you can see the top of the trees inside the walkway as well as Temperate House, another glasshouse that is situated close by.

And inside this glasshouse, there is of course an abundance of beautiful and very exotic flowers, like the one below that I do not know the name of, but is very, very nice indeed.

 

The oldest glasshouse at Kew Gardens is the Palm House. It was built between 1844 and 1848 by Richard Turner after a design by Decimus Burton. It is truly iconic, because when you see this building you immediately think “Kew Gardens”.

 

To finish this blog and to show that there are certainly a lot of colourful plants and flowers to be seen in Kew Gardens, two pictures of Azalea’s and Roses respectively. Of course taken at different times, because that is the fun: there is always something different to be seen, in full bloom or not, in Kew Gardens.