We had been waiting a long time to visit Kew, after making a list of Botanical gardens to see in the UK this was one of the top, so we were excited to finally be planning the trip. We spend the day in London, it was Amy’s birthday so we made sure to cram in as much good stuff as we could. But the gardens were by far the main attraction. That and Shake Shack at Westfield…
When we set off the weather wasn’t great, it had been raining a little and just looked grim overall. But as we got the tube over towards Kew and we started going on some overground tracks things started to brighten up. It was a weekday so it was relatively quiet, a must if you want minimal people in your pictures and at times it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.
We headed straight to one of the main greenhouses, having seen photos of the spiral staircases and huge Monstera’s we wanted to make the most of it before the crowds arrived. We spent a lot of time in here getting photos and exploring all the corners and made our way up to the top where you could really feel the heat and my gear started to steam up.
The other large greenhouse was more sparse, everything was much lower to the ground and was better suited to displaying the exhibition of glass sculptures on show, although very pretty, not really what we were on the hunt for. We didn’t spend long in here and went in search for the large tower we’d seen in the distance.
Having never been before I didn’t realise how big the grounds were, we started walking towards the tower and it felt like miles, but eventually we saw it at the end of a long row of trees. We ventured all the way over to it for some more photos before stopping to fuel up.
Next up was the cacti and tropical plants. These had a totally different feel to the other greenhouses and had multiple paths to follow and layers to the plant displays. I ended up going ahead looking for different angles and colours to shoot.
One of our last stops was “The Hive”, a large art installation outside in the gardens. The entire construction is based around a beehive and gives off some incredible sounds. The building itself is great to look at, you can go under it as well as inside it. Theres a weird thing you do where you put a small piece of wood, similar to a lollipop stick, into a column and bite the other end and you can hear the buzzing in your head. I didn’t do that, only because the last few sticks were all over the floor and I didn’t fancy putting that in my mouth.
Overall there was a lot to see here, I think we need another visit and you could easily spend an entire day if you took your time. We were kind of rushing to get more out of our day in London, so probably missed quite a lot of good stuff. But what we saw was great and I’m pleased with the photos.
