SOMETHING DIFFERENT, A DAY OUT AT ROYAL BOTANICAL GARDENS, KEW

Using up the annual leave had a couple of days due this month and took a day off to visit Kew Gardens not too far away from us having been invited by a work colleague who has an annual pass to this wonderful outer London location near Richmond upon Thames. It's only a few stops on the train from home, and was hopeful that the weather would be kind for us to enjoy the delights of the Royal Gardens. Plan to get there around 11am, hopefully the weather will be kind, and jump on a bus to get us to the Lion Gate entrance on the Kew Road itself. This is close to the southern end of the garden where the Great Pagoda is situated and should give us plenty to explore today. 

Great Pagoda
In the southeast corner of Kew Gardens stands the Great Pagoda (by Sir William Chambers), erected in 1762, from a design in imitation of the Chinese Ta. The lowest of the ten octagonal storeys is 15 m (49 ft) in diameter. From the base to the highest point is 50 m (164 ft). Since it's reopening in 2006 it now has the 'dragons' on each level (see picture below) which are painted 'gold' and around 80 of them in all.

Temperate House
The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759 has had a £41m restoration of the Grade I listed Temperate House building completed in May 2018, this now hosts many artistic events we arrived with them setting up a Japanese installation which begins on 2nd October and this will be a celebration of Japanese plants, arts and culture.

Elevated Walkway
Towering 18 metres above the ground, the Treetop Walkway is a chance to get closer to Kew’s trees. From its heights you can observe the complex ecosystem of the trees' uppermost branches, a world teeming with birds and insects, lichen and fungi. At ground level, sculptures carved from tree trunks illustrate microscopic elements of trees to explain how they grow. A path leads you below ground to the Rhizotron, an underground lab constructed to study the soil.

The Marianne North Gallery of Botanic Art

The Marianne North Gallery was built in the 1880s 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. She left the paintings to Kew on condition that the layout of the paintings in the gallery would not be altered.

The gallery had suffered considerable structural degradation since its creation and during a period from 2008 to 2009 major restoration and refurbishment took place, the gallery originally opened in 1882 and is still the only permanent exhibition in Great Britain dedicated to the work of one woman.

MAP