Tuesday 24 October 2024
Kew Gardens are a must see for visitors to the London area. I am fortunate that there is a #65 bus that regularly runs up to Kew and back. I easily spent 4 hours walking around the gardens and there are various eating places providing sustenance as required. And as luck would have it, I asked a man to take my photo for me in front of the Palm House: he turned out to be a New Zealander living not far from where I was staying in Richmond and when he came back to NZ he stayed with his cousin just a couple of streets away from me in Auckland! What a small world it is.
Kew Gardens is London’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site and is home to the biggest collection of living plants anywhere on Earth – with a Guinness World Record to prove it! The gardens were created in 1759 and have made a significant contribution to the study of plant diversity and economic botany ever since.
The gardens are world-famous for their glasshouses, including the iconic Temperate House, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world, containing over 10,000 different plants. The Palm House has the lush vegetation of tropical and subtropical rainforests and was the first greenhouse to be built on this scale. Many plants in this collection are endangered in the wild, some even extinct.
Kew Gardens also feature landscape elements that illustrate significant periods of the art of gardens from the 18th to the 20th centuries, a wild Arboretum, Great Broad Walk Borders with their floral beauty, and even a Treetops Walkway.
The gardens are a great venue for displaying nature-related art works. I am fortunate to be able to see the exhibition of Marc Quinn: Light into Life – inspired by nature and science. It closes in just a few days.
Marc Quinn: Light into Life Exhibition
Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores “what it is to be human in the world today” through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel.
Quinn has long been interested in the links between nature and humanity, and this exhibition brings that complex relationship to life. The mirrored effect of many of the stainless-steel sculptures blurs the boundaries between the viewer, the sculpture and the landscape, giving every visitor a unique experience of the artworks. Their reflection encourages viewers to see themselves as a part of the artwork and a part of the landscape.
Not only are the artworks a feast for the eyes, they also offer a chance to discover more about the many ways that plants form an essential part of human life. Quinn has been working in close collaboration with Kew scientists and horticulturists to explore more about plants and their incredible forms and shapes, using significant plants from across our collections to inspire his work.
History
The Kew site has been dated as formally starting in 1759, although it can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, in the previous century.
Richmond Palace was built in 1501 and became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, farmed by one of the new private estates.
The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry Capell, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew. Kew Palace was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the 15 royal children.
In 1840, the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society. Over the years the gardens were increased to its present size of 121 hectares (300 acres).
The Palm House was built between 1844 and 1848, and was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. It is considered “the world’s most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure”. The structure’s panes of glass are all hand-blown. The Temperate House, which is twice as large as the Palm House, followed later in the 19th century. It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America.
In July 2003, UNESCO put the gardens on its list of World Heritage Sites.
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