In the latest instalment of London Landmarks, Tom Jeffreys falls in love with Kew Gardens. Twice.
Value: 9
Queues: 9
Shop: 5
Family: 8
Enjoyment: 10
Total: 41/50
One of the things that's been noticeable about this London Landmarks series is that many of these places you only really need to visit once. London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, HMS Belfast, Westminster Abbey: they haven't really changed, some of them for hundreds of years. But by its very nature Kew Gardens is different every time you visit. I've been twice now – amid pouring September rain and now again in March, on the loveliest day of the year so far – and both times it's been wonderful, and, perhaps more importantly, completely different on each occasion. Maybe it's a sign that I'm getting old, or maybe it's a sign that I always was, but I'm basically completely in love with Kew Gardens.
There's so much to do here that even in the rain, when you don't necessarily want to be outside all afternoon, it's still a marvellous day out. In September, we saw the obvious highlights. There's the wet, grey view from the majestic (if rickety) Treetop Walkway – it really is as exciting as you'd imagine. There's the architectural marvel that is the Palm House – hot, wet, dense and packed with extraordinary, exotic flora. It's definitely a little strange (in a good way) to see these symbols of the wild and 'other', arranged and labelled inside this wrought-iron monument to practical Victorian empire-building. Similar in some ways is the Shirley Shirwood Gallery, packed with delicately detailed botanical drawings and studies – which demonstrate the fusion of art and science right at the very origin of botany as a new field for research. And then there's John Pawson's subtly snaking Sackler Crossing – before its drab elegance, we simply stand, calm and quiet.
Across the warmth of a fresh spring day, however, one doesn't feel the need to 'see the sights', as it were. Today, we are free. And what better place to be free than Kew? We dive in amongst the daffodils, dash through little forests, stroll along landscaped lawns, and lie down, softly on the grass, as the sun nuzzles against our necks.
I'm particularly fond of the Davies Alpine House, a relatively recent addition that pumps air through a maze of buried pipes in order to keep all the little alpine plants in the manner to which they've become accustomed. But Kew is studded all over with little corners of colour and life. You could spend an age here, looking. Emerging from some trees, we spy clouds of fragile white and pinks – a crowd of magnolia trees are gathered together, smearing painted blossoms across the sky. We eat honeycomb ice-cream beside a carpet of delicate blue flowers – 386,000 star-shaped Glory of the Snow, to be precise. We sniff the complex scents of the Nosegay Garden, stashed away behind Kew Palace. In the Secluded Garden we discover a pair of picture-perfect duckies, posing in a pond. We see fishes and squirrels, herons and robins and bumble bees, zipping all about from stamen to stamen.
It really is delightful here – an endless trove of treasure and of life.
Click here to see what's on at Kew Gardens.
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Image credit: Dr Crystal Bennes.
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