Kew Orchids (8 Feb 25)

The Kew Gardens Orchid Festival is very much part of my annual calendar (and their's!) and I like to go early to see what it is like so that I have time to go again, and again, if it looks good.

Being a member of Kew Gardens I can go to the gardens any time for free (and take a guest) and as the Orchid Festival is free the only issue is getting tickets which are now required to manage numbers.

I would normally avoid a weekend but my sister and two of her friends wanted to come up from Dorset to see it so we had to go for a slot at 11am on a Saturday. There was a queue but we got in soon after the allotted time. 

Many people had obviously not been to Kew Gardens before, let alone the Orchids Festival, and initial progress was slow as people stopped to look at everything, even before we got to the Festival part of Princess of Wales Conservatory,

The crowd of people continued as we entered the first section as that is where the main display is. A lot of people were taking photos of themselves and of each other with the cascade of flowers behind them.

Walking slowly was not a great problem as we wanted to see and enjoy everything too. As always there was a mix of colourful flowers and model animals to make the festival fun for the whole family.

A one way system was in operation (again) taking us through to the temperate zone at the far end from where we had come in and here there was more of a focus on the models than the flowers.

Immediately after that we were back in the warmth and back amongst the flowers. The orchids delighted, as usual, in their colour and their variety. 

The final model display, just before the exit, was this spectacular whale shark.

We were a little hampered by people at times (any subsequent visits will be at quieter times) but not that much and it took us almost exactly an hour to complete the tour. An hour very well spent and hopefully yo be repeated.

Kew Orchids (2 Feb 24)

Kew Orchids 2024 officially opened on 3 Feb but members were given an early preview and I was happy to take up the offer. This year's festival followed the trend of recent years with fewer large displays and a strict one-way system which takes about half an hour, depending how often you stop to take photos.

This year's theme is Madagscar and while there are a few orchids from the island on display this mostly means that the animal sculptures are of the island, which works very well because of the unique environment there.

Having fewer orchids arranged less densly than previously meant that the flowers made more of an impact individually and it was easier to appreciate their unique characteristics. Orchids have been around for approximately 80 million years and over that time they have evolved into over 800 genera; that is a lot of variety.

 

One advatnage of the members' day was that it was quieter thnan usual and another is that coming at the very start of the month-long festoval it means that it will be worth going back again in a couple of weeks or so when different orchids will be in flower.

Kew Orchids (18 Feb 23)

I made my second visit to Kew Gardens 2023 less than two weeks after the first. My excuse this time was that I had a visitor to take but no excuse was really necessary.

Knowing what to expect I was able to spend my time looking more closely at some of the things I had passed more quickly the first time and to take time to compose a passable photograph of one of the giraffes.

Of course the orchids were the point of the visit and, again, it was the variety of their shapes and colours that delighted me.

  

We also made a quick visit to Shirley Sherwood Gallery to see the extraordinary When Flowers Dream exhibition by Tanya Schultz. It was just as weird as it looks in the picture below and was well worth seeing because of that.

 

Kew Orchids (6 Feb 23)

I have been going to Kew Orchids for several years and for good reasons. I go to Kew Gardens regularly anyway because I have annual membership, it costs nothing additional to go to Kew Orchids (though a timed ticket is needed) and it is always very worth seeing.

Kew Orchids has changed a little in recent years, perhaps in response to covid-19 perhaps because of cost-cutting and perhaps a little of both, and there are now fewer orchids on display and the route through them is more regimented.

This may sound like it has become a lesser event but I would compare it to, say, Chelsea Flower Show where you have walls of flowers on display in the marque and gardens outside and Kew Orchids has moved from the large displays to embedding the orchids more into the rest of the glasshouse. I guess it is a question of preferences and I like the new approach.

Besides, it is still free so fewer orchids is still excellent value for money!

 

There are several major displays still and, as always, there is one in the pond soon after entering the glasshouse. The lion is magnificent and it is joined by some other animals in the pond.

 

The leopard is magnificent too. Animal models are a feature of Kew Orchids and they help to put the orchids into context, this year that context is Cameroon.

 

Of course there are still plenty of orchids to see and I have chosen just a couple of examples from the many photographs that I took to show their diversity of colour and patterning.

 

And, of course, I like to include some of the glasshouse in the background if I can because I love the architecture of it and the contrast between its straight lines and the curvaceous plants.

 

There was something unusual and unexpected at the end of the route with a few displays like this based on Cameroonian culture. Unusual and unexpected was a good way to end a lovely trail.

Christmas at Kew 2022

Christmas at Kew was such a success that I was quick to book again for 2022. I actually booked it in January! In 2021 I had a late drop-out (covid) and the missing person was keen to give it another ago and after a little bit of asking around I got 6 tickets. As a member of Kew Gardens they were only £23 each which I thought was very reasonable.

Again things wen't slightly awry, including a son having his work's Christmas party on that night, but we had a full set of six on the nigh, four of whom were always meant to be there.

The first part of the evening went wrong too. We arranged to all meet in The Railway Tavern beforehand and some of us planned to eat there. We ordered food at 6:15 but at 7pm (our timed tickets were for 7pm) our food had not arrived and so we got a refund and left.

Luckily Kew at Christmas saved the evening.
 

As with 2021, it was a long route through the gardens and it took as about 90 minutes to get around which included one short queue for hot drinks.

There were several large set pieces, like the one above, and lots of pretty lights between them. All of the settings were good and some were magical and I paused many times to take in the experience. And the best bit was walking through some of the displays and being engulfed by them.

I will be buying tickets for Kew at Christmas 2023 as soon as they go on sale. The only question is how many.

Kew Orchids (29 Feb 20)

My second visit to Kew Orchids this year was to take my sister there and it was a second visit that I was happy to make. In previous years, before long queues and ticketing, I would visit the exhibition several times; once in-depth and other passing visits because it was a pretty place to go.

We went for the first timed slot of the day, 10:30am, and the careful planning worked out very well. Our 65 bus arrived at Victoria Gate just after they opened at 10am and we were able to walk in via the members' queue with almost no waiting.

We ambled across to the Princess of Wales Conservatory knowing that we had half an hour to get there. Even ambling we were there in about fifteen minutes and were resigned to having to wait for another fifteen so we were very pleasantly surprised to be allowed in straight away. Not only did the remove the need for any queueing but it meant that we had forty five minutes before the next group would be allowed in.

The first big display of orchids was a series of arches in the large central section. Displays like this are best appreciated at a little distance (rather than admiring the individual flowers close-up) and that was a lot easier to do with not many people around. We were back there towards the end of our visit when it was a lot busier and there were several people patiently waiting for a gap in the crowd so that they could take the phots they wanted.

From there we took a necessarily circuitous route and tried to cover all of the main paths in all of the rooms without retracing our steps too often. Without planning, but with good knowledge of the building, I think we achieved that.

The festival seemed less intense this year with fewer staged displays and more flowers embedded in the existing beds. I liked that as I prefer the natural beauty of the individual flowers to the manufactured beauty of the displays.

As this was my sister's first visit to Kew Gardens when it was fully open (the Christmas Lights are a separate thing) we invented a route through the gardens and that worked well too. That had to start with a drink and some cake in the Orangery and from there we went to Rhododendron Dell, Minka House, Bamboo Garden, Sackler Crossing, Temperate House (mandatory) and, finally, The Pavilion to do some shopping.

It was a packed couple of hours and still left us with plenty to do on our next visit.

Kew Orchids (24 Feb 20)

The annual orchids festival at Kew Gardens is very popular and for several good reasons, orchids being the main one. This popularity has led to very long queues in recent years and to a timed ticket system this year.

I was able to avoid both by taking advantage of one of the early openings fo members which meant getting there by 9am, a time when I am normally thinking about having a second cup of tea in bed. The early start was something of a challenge but it did mean being in the conservatory when it was only busy rather than too busy.

The display seemed slightly muted this year, especially away from the central display and it only took me an hour (!) to see everything.

With fewer extravagant displays to grab my attention I was able to concentrate on the individual flowers; more of an opportunity than a problem. I picked this one photograph as an example of the delights on show.

Kew Orchids 2020 was certainly worth getting up early for.

Kew Gardens (11 March 18)

A week after the Orchids Festival I was back at Kew Gardens for a normal visit and that meant going in at Lion Gate and heading first for the Japanese Landscape which looks gorgeous at any time of the year.

The stones are as important as the planting and I love the way that they are raked. This must be done regularly to remove leaves etc. and it always looks pristine.

Nearby a couple of peacocks were celebrating Summer by showing off. The other male was having more success at that time and was close to the hen leaving this one to groom his feathers.

I went up the treetop walkway, as I usually do when in that corner of the gardens, and with no leaves to look at yet I had a close look at the Temperate House that was due to open later in the year.

Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death exhibition at Kew Gardens

I had gone to Kew Gardens for the orchids but I had heard good things about the Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death exhibition in Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art so I strolled along to that.

The gallery is in one of the quieter and least attractive parts of the garden, on the path between Victoria Gate and Lion Gate and I had not been there before.

It is a modest sized gallery with half a dozen room containing several small exhibitions. Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death was in Room 5 and, unlike the rest of the gallery, operated a one-way system through it.

The exhibition consisted of several thousand dried flowers suspended on threads from the ceiling. They were hung such that a narrow path weaved through them. This took you right up to the flowers though we were instructed to take care not to touch any of them. Dried flowers are somewhat delicate after all.

It sounds like a simple concept and it probably looks it from the photographs to but to walk through it was an amazing experience, and one I took very slowly so that I could savour it for longer.

There was a great variety among the flowers and grasses that were suspended for our pleasure and I stopped to look at many of the threads individually as well as enjoying the cumulative effect of being in a room full of them.

The exhibition closes on 11 March and I hope that I will get the chance to see it again before it does.

Kew Gardens Orchids Festival 2018

Every year Kew Gardens has an orchids festival and every year I go to it. It is easy to see why.

They take over most of Princess of Wales Conservatory and this year they did so with a Thailand theme. That was shown in the designs, such as this temple, and in the music (not pictured).

As always I got there for the 10am opening on a Sunday and went straight to the conservatory. Everybody else was going to the same place so it was already lively by the time that I walked in but it was not too busy to be frustrating. Waiting for people to move out of the way of a photo you are trying to take can take a while particularly when they are oblivious to the situation.

There was no such problem with the many elevated displays. These also allowed me to capture some of the conservatory with the flowers, I like to mix the natural and the manufactured, and in this case I also included some of the paper lanterns in the shot.

It did not matter where the orchids were placed or how they were arranged, they always looked wonderful.

There are usually some animal objects of some king in among the flowers and while this year's elephant failed to impress me I did like the buffalo.

But the orchids were, rightly, the stars of the shows so it is only fair to finish with a closer look at some of them.

Kew Gardens (4 February 18)

Other things, like lazy Sunday morning lie-ins and bad weather, had kept me away from Kew Gardens for more weeks than I was used to so I was glad of an excuse to go back. That excuse was that other people wanted to go to and it was a select group of six of us that queued outside Victoria Gate waiting for it to open at 10am.

As always there was no clear plan but somebody mentioned the Treetop Walkway so we headed there first. Being in to the gardens early meant that we were the only people on it, which is just how I like it. It sways enough by itself without having children running all over it.

It was even colder up there than it was on the ground so somebody else suggested a green house and we avoided any further decision by visiting both the Palm House and the Princess of Wales Conservatory which was getting ready for the Orchids Festival scheduled to open the following week.

The next warm place we had to visit was the Orangery. This had gone a little down market with the coffee coming from a machine and the cake not up to its previous standard. I suspected that this was because of the opening of The Botanical which had become the smartest cafe in the gardens. I resolved to always go there from now on.

The final leg took us through the Alpine garden and back out through Victoria Gate, just in time to walk on to a 65 home.

It had been an unremarkable couple of hours and that is why Kew Gardens works so well, even on an unremarkable day it fills a Sunday morning pleasingly with consummate ease.

Kew Gardens (20 August 17)

Kew Gardens opens over the Summer at 8am for members and I decided to take advantage of that even though it meant getting up earlier on a Sunday than I would normally do on a working day. The breakfast and buses worked to plan and I was at Victoria Gate about five minutes before opening time. There were people there before me.

Going early means that less of the day is taken with the visit but the most important benefit is that the garden is relatively empty and do it is possible to take pictures like this without worrying about the people in it.

My plan, such as it was, was to walk round anti-clockwise sticking more or less to the outer path. That was only a rough plan and I went through the Rock Garden rather than the Plant Family Beds. This is one of the areas that benefits most from fewer people as the sounds of the several waterfalls can be heard more clearly and the main view, next to the biggest waterfall, is peaceful.

The Grass Garden, close to the Rock Garden, is always one of my favourite parts of the gardens at this time of year when they are in full growth. The variety and majesty of the grasses never fails to delight me.

It was quite a long walk round from there to Log Trail in the south-west corner. It had been many years since I had last seen, let alone tried, the trail and it was much longer than I remembered. I presume that was because it had been added to rather than a fault of my memory.

This is just a section of it, perhaps a quarter, and you can see that it has a wide variety of balance challenges. I suspect that it is intended for children but I had great fun completing the course.

I finished my tour of Kew Gardens just before 10am as the gates were opening for the regular visitors. It had been a wonderful two hours.

An early stroll through Kew Gardens (22 May 16)

I have been a member of Kew Gardens for several years and have taken advantage of that membership to go as frequently as I can. Most of my visits have been first thing on Sunday mornings to see as much of the garden as possible

Now membership has got even better with the gardens opening at 8am for members, a full two hours before the general public is allowed in. Enjoying the gardens when they are quiet has got a lot easier.

It was the right time of year to visit the Alpine Gardens as a lot of the plants were in bloom.

The large waterfall (there are several) in the Alpine Gardens is the main physical feature there and it has its own viewing platform to appreciate it from. I do that often but this is a pleasure best not shared and the absence of people walking and talking meant there were no distractions from the falling water.

This is possibly the best place to be during the early openings.

I took this picture to show off the pretty roof line of the Princess of Wales Conservatory and the way that it sits easily with the trees around it.

I still prefer the older glasshouses and am counting down the days until the Temperate House opens again in 2018, meanwhile the Princess of Wales Conservatory is doing an admiral job and I find myself going there quite often. I have yet to find an easy route through it, and that is one of its charms.

At times it felt like the opening scenes of 28 Days Later with nobody to be seen in places that are normally bustling with activity. This is the Sackler Crossing devoid of people.

I prefer to go on the Treetop Walkway when it is quiet because  I can take it at my own pace and not worry about other people trying to get past me as I pause to look at something. It is not that wide and my caution of heights means that I prefer to walk sedately down the middle so anything which disturbs my progress makes me a little edgy.

There were no such problems on this morning as the only other group up there with me were well in front of me and were on the way back down before I had got half way round. Being alone meant being more comfortable and more able to appreciate the trees, which is why the walkway is there.

Returning towards Victoria Gate I walked around the Temperate House (under reconstruction) and onto Pagoda Vista, named for obvious reasons. This is one of the three main vistas that form a triangle around the lake and they are normally too full of people for me to be tempted to use them. Not this day.

The early openings at Kew Gardens are a very big enhancement to an already good deal. Membership now qualifies as a "no brainer".

Kew Gardens (13 May 16)

I took advantage of my time between jobs and the early opening for members to go for a good walk through Kew Gardens visiting most of the highlights when there were few other people there to distract me.

I had to go in via Victoria Gate as that is the only one that is open early and from there I turned right with no real plan other than to see lots of things and to walk at a brisk pace to cover a decent distance.

I'll admit to one sad fact about me that drove some of this behaviour. I use the Swarm/FourSquare app on my photo to check in to places and this was my chance to become "mayor" of a few more places within Kew Gardens by checking-in there more that anyone else; I am currently mayor of several places including the Palm House and the Sackler Crossing. Other people play that game too and I lose some of my mayorships from time to time and that just makes me determined to revisit those places next time that I am in Kew. One of the reasons that I play the game is to give me some places to head for every time that I go to Kew - it is a way of making a plan for each visit.

As always I took quite a few photographs, 76 on this occasion which is fairly typical, and I had some difficulty in whittling it down to just ten to show the highlights. The obvious reason for this is there are lots of highlights in Kew Gardens and this morning I visited most of them.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory is probably the place that benefited the most from the early start as it is normally full of people and the layout means that they are always in the picture. Even today there was somebody, but only one. The splodge of blue on the left is another early visitor.

This corner of Kew Gardens, in the north-east corner, is always quiet, even on busy days, though that was no excuse for ignoring it when the whole gardens were quiet. I like the structures here and being on the edge of the gardens this a place to go to extend the walk.

The appearance of the gallery by the main gate on Kew Green (Elizabeth Gate) was helped considerably by the thick bed of tulips next to it. I love dark tulips and every time I see them I am reminded of the bag of bulbs that I bought in a flower market in Amsterdam that promised such things but only produced yellow flowers.

The Queen's Garden behind Kew Palace was looking especially lovely with more tulips, this time pink and white. The Palace hides this garden from the rest of Kew so it is another place that is usually quiet and quietness suits it.

I took this picture to show what most of Kew Gardens looked like that morning. It is sometimes easy to focus on the landmarks and forget the wide expanses like this that are the true heart of Kew.

I have seen the peacocks in Kew many times but they had never been this compliant before. Perhaps they were also appreciating the quiet morning.

It is the structure of the Japanese Landscape that makes it so pleasant and there is normally no colour there. The splotches of red transformed its appearance, if only for a few weeks.

I had to go on the Rhizotron and Treetop Walkway as I always to when in that quarter of Kew Gardens. The structure shakes a little as people tramp around it and so, while I know that the structure is completely safe, I am more comfortable when I am alone up there.

The vistas are another defining feature of Kew Gardens and this is the Syon Vista looking away from the Palm House and across the river to Syon House. On the right the roses are not yet ready for their turn to show off.

The Palm House looked as imperious as ever and the Parterre as lovely.

It was a great way to spend a Friday morning and comfortably justified the early start.