 | London Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens") Reviews | Tips 1 - 10 of 27 |  |
Kew Gardens is a beautiful place. It consists of formal gardens, manicured lawns and botanical greenhouses.
One of the main attractions is the Palm House, a metal and glass greenhouse filled with tropical plants.
Each year in spring they have an orchid festival, which is well worth a look.
This is a fabulous place for all the family. Visit in spring to see all of the flowering bulbs all over the gardens.
In summer there are concerts and in winter they have an ice rink. Leave a Comment Phone: 020 8332 5000Directions: Nearest Tube: Kew Gardens Bus: Number 65 (from Ealing/Richmond/Kingston) stops at a couple of the entrance gates.Website: www.rbgkew.org.uk
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Visit this World Heritage Site - the largest and most diverse collection of plants in the world.
Kew Gardens isn't just a beautiful green vegetated sanctuary from the noise and pollution of London streets - its not just orchids, glass houses, trees and aquatic gardens - its a research database of global plant diversity. Now, to me, that is more important in this fragile planet of ours than the Taj Mahal and Waterfalls. It is life on our planet - and Kew is that - and its right here in London - struggling amongst the pollution.
Please do visit - its going to change your life - for the better. It may help save our future.
For an excellent website about Kew visit Kew Gardens now. To visit Kew in person is easy - its 10km south west of the city centre in Richmond, on the banks of the River Thames.
Its open every day - all details on the website.
I'd just like you to know - my dad came from Richmond and though I was born in Wales - I spent many happy holidays visiting aunts and grandmother - who took me to Kew, and the Cutty Sark (Greenwich), Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the River Thames at Westminster.
Then, years later, I studied my Masters in Imperial College - London. Leave a Comment Phone: 0 20 8332 5655Directions: Kew Gardens tube Richmond - a nice town - now absorbed into Greater London.Website: http://www.rbgkew.org.uk Other Contact: www.multimap.co.uk
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One of my favourite's places in London are the Kew Gardens or Royal Botanic Gardens.
These gardens are one of the best botanical centres of the world.
Open to the public in the s.XVIII thanks to many collaborators and these gardens contain more than 50,000 different species from all over the world!!
It is open every day.
winter time: 9:30 to 16:30h
summer time: 9:30 to 19:30h
The entrance costs around ?5.
and in summer is lovely to spend the day with some friends, taking pictures and having a pic-nic outdoors.... hmmm Leave a Comment
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This is a great day out. Tickets are 10 pounds for adults - children under 16 go free.
There is great accessibility for wheelchair users (tickets 7GBP, but their essential carers get in for free).
There is so much to see and do here - great place to take the kids with aerial walkways in the glass houses, marine displays and a special *botanical* play area called Climbers and Creepers an all weather facility with organised art activities.
For the adults there are the 19th Century glass houses, Rose Gardens, Arboretum, Temperate House, Princess of Wales Conservatory, and the Kew Explorer - There's more info and pics on my Kew page Kew Gardens
Take a picnic or have lunch in the coffee shop. A piece of cake and a coffee will set you back about 4GBP. Leave a Comment
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After viewing Kew Palace, we hopped onto the little train that takes you around the Gardens.. we didn’t have much time here (only an afternoon), so thought this would be the best way to view it.
It was super, except for the fact we had VERY noisy and disruptive kids behind us the whole trip. We battled to hear the commentary as a result. It cost us £3.50 each.
We saw a lot though and will go back and bring a picnic and do it properly. There are 300 acres to see after all!
The gardens are a mix of order and wildness it seems to me. They have formal landscaped sections, green houses and less cultivated areas.
The Chinese pagoda reaches high into the sky and is Kew’s most recognisable feature.
Something that piqued my fancy was the Grass Garden. I have a deep love and fascination of paper, enjoy making it and using it to create. Inside the garden there are over 600 varieties of grasses from all over the world.
Next door is the Wood House, where they explain how to make paper and its origins. All very interesting!
On the little train we also drove quite close to the Thames River, where we could see people walking, playing ball and cycling. We think a picnic would go down well there! So, we will be back in summer! Leave a Comment
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There are various entrances into Kew Gardens. We went in through the ornate gates on the Kew side.
The queues were long (It was Easter Sunday, apparently the BUSIEST day of the year for them) We queued outside for 40 minutes, then went in.
First stop, Kew Palace!
Kew Palace is absolutely beautiful. Stunning. Three floors have been opened to the public again after 10 years, after extensive renovation work.
It was built in 1631 and is where Queen Charlotte and their family lived. She loved it. She died in the house, in a chair.
This gives you an intimate glimpse into the Royal lives that once lived and loved here.
Entrance is £5 for adults and £3 for kids. Leave a Comment
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If you get a nice sunny day, Kew Gardens is an excellent place to spend a morning. I got there around 10 so it was too early to use take the 40 minute Kew Explorer tram which would have only been an additional L1 with the London Pass.
So I started left from the Victoria Gate entrance, there really wasn't much to see in that direction besides a conservatory and lots of trees. Had I headed right instead of left, that is where most of the flowering gardens are along with the palm house, orangery, etc.
I posted a bunch of pics and some more tips over on my Kew Gardens page so go check it out if you are a floral and fauna fan. Leave a Comment Phone: 0 20 8332 5655Directions: Kew Gardens tube Short walk from the tube, it's in zone 3 so I had to buy an extension on my zone 1-2 travelcard for L1.10 each way.Website: http://www.rbgkew.org.uk
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Kew Gardens is a leading centre of botanical research, a training ground for professional gardeners, and a popular visitor attraction. The gardens are mostly quite informal, with a few more formal areas. There are extensive conservatories, a herbarium, and a library.
Kew is important as a repository of seeds; it has one of the most important seedbanks. With the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium, they co-operate in the IPNI database to produce an authoritative source of information on the nomenclature of plants. Leave a Comment
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The Royal Botanic Gardens or as mostly known The Kew Gardens is host to one of the largest collections of plants from around the world. The gardens were created by combing two royal estates in 1772, under the patronage of George III Kew Gardens developed into one of the world's foremost centres of horticultural research.
You can find a nice Victorian Houses around the tropical plans. and some very uniqe plans everywhere, some forsts and even a river by it.
I was there in Sept' and it was nice though i've gota a feeling that in spring time it should be really lovely.
Entrance Fees:
Adult: £6.50
Child: Free
Concessions: Over 60 - £4.50
Student - £4.50 / ES40 - £4.50 Leave a Comment Phone: +44 (0)20 8940 1171Directions: Kew Gardens, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB +44 (0)20 8940 1171
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Whilst at the Kew Gardens I had the fortune/misfortune (delete whichever is appropriate) to notice (hard not to when it's jammed in front of your eyes) the glass works of an American named Chihuly. Some felt it was "a unique relationship between gardens and glass". Others wondered what on earth the glass sculptor had done to con his way into this natural setting.
Personally, at times they grated on me, at other times (particularly in the Temperate House) I thought they were really neat.
Since I am personally committed to being in favour of giving any kind of art a go, though there have been glaring examples down through the years when I wish they had died before giving birth to such appalling works, I tolerated this impost on what I had expected to be a purely natural work by Mother Nature.
Apparently much of Chihuly's inspiration came from similar works in Finland where his team experimented by tossing glass into the river and letting it float downstream. Local children in boats gathered them up and apparently this was what inspired Chuhuly.
Children, leave them alone next time.
I didn't mind the Macchia or the Ikebana, the latter named after the stylised beauty of Japanese floral arrangements which Chihuly admired on visits to Japan. No, it was all the rubbish sitting in an otherwise pristine pool and a multitude of balls strung up next to one of the Gardens' showpieces, the Chilean palm, that I found at odds with my expectations. Leave a Comment
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