It took us an hour and a half by tube to get from Karen’s to Kew Gardens.
Even though the weather prediction was for a wet and soggy day we decided that a little rain would not deter us.
We were last here in 1991 but there wasn’t much that either of us could remember of our visit.
Kew Gardens house the “largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world”.
Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the 27,000 living specimens curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew while the herbarium one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens.
The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London’s top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.
Kew Palace is the smallest of the British royal palaces. To the rear of the building is the “Queen’s Garden” which includes a collection of plants believed to have medicinal qualities.
We spent about four hours in the gardens but in that time only covered about a quarter of it.
As the afternoon progressed the weather became even damper but the positive side of it was that there were no crowds.
We went into the Temperate glass house looking for the silver fern from New Zealand but alas we could not find one. The picture above is not of the silver fern but more to point out how a fern starts out.
We left Kew at 3.00pm and made our way home in time to sit down and watch the TV coverage regarding the demise of the Queen.
She served her country well.
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