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| The entrance at the Victoria Gate. |
Recently we (Myrokan blog) had this opportunity
to visit the world most renowned botanical garden that also known as Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew Gardens is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the
world that also played many important roles in introducing specimens of plant
and trees to many other countries such as rubber and tea. Kew Gardens not only keep
living specimens of plants, but also dried specimens, seeds and DNA, libraries,
illustrations and many other records related to plants. That’s what makes Kew
Gardens one of the most important places that we visited in London.
Kew Garden founded in 1840 in the area that
originally was the exotic garden at Kew Park. That park itself had been
enlarged several times with the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew
in 1772. Within this area many garden structures had been built and some of
them still remain until today.
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| The pond right in front of the Museum no 1. |
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| The temperate house just been reopened two days earlier. |
Well, there are so many things happened back
there, but here we want to see other important things that we still can see at
Kew Gardens and other activities related to it - that will give benefits to us
and the future generations. Even though they have only taken care of plants,
but the further study of these plants is actually for human benefits such as
for agriculture, medicine, farming, cloning, seed bank, references, cataloguing
and you can check more on their website – included at the end of this article.
Knowing more about Kew Gardens is important before
you plan to visit it (well, no one can ever visit the whole of the areas within
one day – so you must know which areas that important to you, or you can visit
it several times). Maybe the best way to do it by asking these few questions;
- Are you just want to see the plants in Kew
Gardens?
- Are you interested to know how Kew Gardens
keep the specimens of the plants and trees?
- Are you interested to know the history of Kew
Gardens and their buildings (such as their glass houses, their garden structures,
bridges, canopy walk, cottage, palaces and many other buildings in Kew
Gardens)?
- Are you interested to know more about the
activities conducted here in Kew Gardens?
- Are you interested to participate in
activities conducted by Kew Gardens (exhibitions or scientific activities) in
their vicinity or online?
- Where you can find the map of the whole area?
- How you are going to explore the area?
- Time of opening, as the time will change
according to the seasons.
- How you can contact Kew Gardens in order to
get more information in case you need some help?
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| The Palm House another important glass house with huge size. |
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| The tropical plants and trees can live vigorously inside this glass house. |
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| It might hard for us to see this plant in their own natural habitat. |
There are many other questions you can ask during
the preparation to visit Kew Gardens. By identifying your priorities you will
save lots of time and you will know exactly where to look at during your visit.
Even though I managed to see what I want during my visit, I still missed a few
things - I think I could improve it if I plan it properly. The other reason is,
there are too many things to see.
The best thing was, during my visit the Temperate
House has just reopened two days earlier. I also joined the tour guide that
explaining more details about the history, the process of restoration that cost
around £41 million and take a look at the Temperate House itself. It was closed
for the past 5 years for the restoration process. There are many interesting things
about this building that we should talk about it separately – hopefully I will
get a chance to do it.
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| The Temperate House not only important for its functions but also for its architecture. |
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| The plants and trees had been relocated back into the Temperate House. |
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| Kew Palace, another important building in Kew Gardens. |
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| Flowers of plant at the Queen’s Garden. |
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| Flowers of plant at the Queen’s Garden. |
There are few more glass houses in Kew Gardens
includes Palm House, Waterlilly House, Princess of Wales Conservatory and
Davies Alpine House. All of the glass houses, housing different types of plants
- so please try not to miss it. You can use optional transports in the gardens
either bicycle or electric train to help you travelling around. I used the electric
train and still I missed few!
Here in this article I shared a few photos during
my visit. If you want to see more photos you can visit our fanpage
where I posted more photos. I hope it will help others who unable to visit to
Kew yet to see how it look like and to get the general ideas of what Kew
Gardens is.
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| The Princess of Wales Conservatory glass house. |
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| Orchids of tropical planted in this glass house. |
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| Another beautiful tropical plant’s flower. |
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| Another beautiful view of the pillar’s covered with tropical plants. |
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| You can see different types of plants in the same glass house. |
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| Carnivorous plant specimens, is one of important plants that I want to see here in Kew Gardens. |
Besides visiting Kew Gardens physically, you
still can learn more about it or get involved with their activities online. Check
their websites to learn more about their activities. You can easily get in
touch with them to know more about any activities that you can get involved
with. So this is the link to Kew Gardens’
website.
There are many other things I would like to
share about the details in each area of Kew Gardens, perhaps I can do it soon. Before
that, you can ask me if there is any question - don’t forget to see the photos
that I posted on my fanpage
to get more ideas about Kew Gardens.
