Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens a gigantic botanical garden. It is the world's largest collection of living plants. 1 in 8 of all of the plants species in the world are represented here. It all houses the world's largest collection of dried herbs in the 'herbarium.' In 2009 it is celebrating its 250th anniversary. They have free walking tours of the grounds and we took one guided by this little old lady, who clearly knew her stuff and was passionate about the park. It was terrific. The park is huge and really has to be experienced to be appreciated. Pictures do not do it justice. We were fortunate to go on a 'mostly' pretty day with many of the flowers in bloom.

The wood carving above was done by a school kid and was cut from trees that were blown down in a big storm a few years ago. It represents the park and show several of the more notable structures.

And it also is the home of the smallest of the 16 royal palaces, Kew Palace. (which we didn't go in- why bother? We have our standards. )

There is a Japanese pagoda. It is 163 feet tall, we are a long way from it taking this picture.

The have a greenhouse called the Waterlily House, that is amazing. The center picture is the pool in the middle of the greenhouse and those giant floating things are all one huge plant! The two pictures of flowers are also part of the same plant. Interestingly, the flowers are bright colors until a bee comes along. The flowers will close on the bee and slowly turn a dark red and cool off. think this lasts all night. Then the flower opens, and the bee, totally covered in pollen by this time loses interest in this dark colored, cooler plant and goes looking for warmer, brighter plants which it pollenates.

They have what they call the 'treetop walkway' which as you can see below, is exactly what it sounds like. It was great walking amoung the tops of the trees.

Below you see pictures of two of the older residents of this park. Remember the park is 250 years old, so there are some old trees. These two are on crutches.

MISCELLANEOUS PIX

In the US you could get arrested for this, in the UK they mean "potted plant."