Royal Acres of Green
HERE & THERE
By LEE ANNE PECK
October/November 2001
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Visitors inside the Palm House enjoy viewing a wide variety of useful plants and rainforest species.
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Escape to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for an experience
unbridled by London’s busy streets.
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Your European travels bring you to bustling
London, with all its diversity, culture, history, and
entertainment. You watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham
Palace, enjoy the theater, and visit the vast array of museums,
galleries, and monuments, and now you’re probably ready for a quiet
side trip away from the crowds.
Head southwest from the center of London via automobile, subway,
bus, or boat (in summer) to the 300-acre Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew, on the south bank of the River Thames. This research
institution houses outdoor and indoor plant collections, including
several gardens with herbs, as well as gift shops, restaurants, a
bevy of greenhouses (or “glasshouses”), and landscaped trails for
wandering and picnicking.
Your day at Kew Gardens
The tube, or subway, is probably the easiest way to get to Kew,
about a thirty-minute trip from the center of London. Travel to the
Kew Gardens station, then walk through the charming village of Kew
with its shops, cafes, and inns. From the station, it’s a short
three-block walk to the gardens’ Victoria Gate entrance, one of
four entrances.
If you don’t have the entire day and are primarily interested in
exploring those gardens or glasshouses with herbs, you’ll want to
explore the East and North sections. The West section features a
trail that rambles along the Thames, great for leisurely
walking.
The Kew Gardens are open year-round (closed only on Christmas
and New Year’s Day). The outdoor gardens feature seasonal
plantings; however, the glasshouse displays stay relatively
unchanged throughout the year. Especially noteworthy are the Palm
House, with its exhibits of useful plants and rainforest species,
and the Princess of Wales Conservatory, showcasing ten different
climates and the plants that live there.
Kew offers guided tours, themed tours, concerts, and adult
education courses. A visit to the Kew website (www.kew.org) will
provide you with information about upcoming activities.
In the warmer months, you’ll be overwhelmed by the fragrant
smells as you walk outside from garden to garden; the scents of the
Rose Garden behind the Palm House are especially intoxicating.
Informative signage identifies each plant in the gardens; however,
you might want to bring a book that translates the plants’
botanical names into common ones.
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