Palm House

10 places to encounter London’s animal life…7. Kew Gardens…

by exploringlondon

Famous for it’s flora, Kew Gardens is also home to some unusual animal life including Chinese water dragons who live in the warm environments of the glasshouses.

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Other animals in the gardens include foxes, hedgehogs and birds including green and great-spotted woodpeckers, mute swans, Canada geese, mallards, ring-necked parakeets, kingfishers, tawny owls, moorhens, and stock doves.

And, of course, the gardens are home to a myriad of insects including bees, butterflies and dragonflies as well as aquatic life including frogs, newts and fish.

WHERE: Kew Gardens (nearest Tube station is Kew Gardens); WHEN: 10am to 7pm (last entry 6pm) daily; COST: £25 adults/£8 children 16 and under (children under four free) (cheaper tickets for online bookings and during off-peak period from 1st November to 31st January); WEBSITE: www.kew.org.

This Week in London – ‘Lucky Jim’ reunited with historic plane; Banksy work related to Guildhall Yard; and, a new Kew audio tour…

by exploringlondon

• ‘Lucky Jim’, a toy cat mascot belong to Jim Alcock – pilot of the first trans-Atlantic flight, has been reunited with the Vickers Vimy biplane aircraft that made the flight for the first time since 1919. The cat accompanied the famous aviator and his navigator Arthur Whitten Brown on their historic 17 hour, 1,880 mile journey. Following preservation efforts is now displayed alongside the aircraft in the Flight gallery at the Science Museum in South Kensington. Lucky Jim was previously displayed at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester until 2019. A cartoon version of the cat is also the star of a new family trail around the gallery. For more, see https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/flight.

The Palm House at Kew Gardens. PICTURE: Annie Spratt/Unsplash

• Explore the plants of Kew Gardens’ historic Palm House with a new audio tour. Created by Kew’s Community Horticulture Programme in collaboration with outreach participants, Pollinators of the Palm House puts a spotlight on some of the remarkable stories and pollination tricks of incredible plants inside the 175-year-old structure. These include the giant cycad (Encephalartos altensteinii) – officially the oldest pot plant in the world, and the traveller’s palm (Ravenala madagascariensis), which is pollinated by lemurs in the wild on Madagascar. For more, see www.kew.org.

• An artwork by Banksy has been relocated to Guildhall Yard for its protection. The work, which depicts swimming piranhas, appeared on a sentry box near Ludgate Hill earlier this month. A City of London Corporation spokesperson saying a permanent home would be found “in due course”.

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LondonLife – Christmas at Kew…

by exploringlondon

Be dazzled by more than a million twinkling lights at the enchanted wonderland that is Kew Gardens this Christmas.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in London’s west have once again teamed up with entertainment promoter Raymond Gubbay Ltd to create a brand new illuminated trail. It starts with a path lit by hundreds of illuminated globes winding through trees festooned with silvery shards of light, snowflakes and stars and includes attractions such as an enormous glowing ‘Sledge Tree’ – made from more than 360 wooden Santa sledges, and a chorus of ‘Singing Trees’.

Other artistic installations along the trail include an ultraviolet walkway of thousands of continuously moving bubbles (created by Between Art and Technology (BAT) Studio), an enchanted promenade of hundreds of huge glowing peonies, giant grasses and coloured reeds (the work of French art studio TILT), and a host of giant trees, made from thousands of colourful, sparkling flowers complete with holographic petals (creative studio PITAYA) located along the Great Broad Walk Borders (included in the trail for the first time).

The fire garden has also returned – this year as a corridor of intricate pulsing fire sculptures and rotating lantern-lit Christmas trees – as has the Palm House finale in which the pond and glasshouse spring to life in an explosion of laser beams, jumping jets of light and kaleidoscopic projections playing across a giant water screen.

And, of course, there’s roasted chestnuts, mulled cider and Santa and his elves as well as a festive fairground and other food and drink. Open between 5pm and 10pm (timed entries between 5pm and 7.40pm),  the after dark event runs until 1st January. Admission charges apply. For more, see www.kew.org.

PICTURES: Above – A sea of illuminated globes by the Palm House / Below (top to bottom)  – 1. Giant glowing trees along The Great Broad Walk Borders; 2. Animated illuminations at Kew’s lake;  3. Giant peonies; 4.Palm House Grand Finale. ALL PHOTOGRAPHY © Jeff Eden/RBG Kew.

Around London – Burial place of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake gets Grade I listing; Kew Gardens joins Streetview; and, Afghan treasures on show…

by exploringlondon

• The London burial place of writers John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe and artist and poet William Blake has been recognised as one of the city’s most significant historic landscapes with a Grade I listing on the national Register of Parks and Gardens. The news, which was announced last month, also sees 75 tombs located within Bunhill Fields Cemetery individually listed. Bunhill, located between City Road and Bunhill Row, is one of 106 registered cemeteries in London (and now one of only seven Grade I listed cemeteries). It was established in 1660 and, thanks to its not being associated with Anglican place of worship, is viewed as the “pre-eminent graveyard for Nonconformists in England” . About 123,000 burials took place in its four acres before it was closed in 1869. The oldest monument is that of theologian Theophilus Gale, who died in 1678. As well as the tombs of Buynan, Defoe and Blake, others listed on the register include that of Dame Mary Page, who died in 1728 and whose tomb inscription talks of her stoicism in the face of 240 gallons of water being taken out of her prior to her death, and Joseph Denison, a banker who died in 1806 and was one of England’s wealthiest commoners at the time. The listing was made by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport following advice from English Heritage. For more on Bunhill Fields, follow this link…

• Kew Gardens has joined Google Streetview, meaning it’s now possible to navigate your way around the gardens from the comfort of your own home. More than 26 kilometres of paths and the interiors of some of the garden’s glasshouses – including the Palm House and the Temperate House – can now be seen on Streetview which offers 360 degree views. Professor Stephen Hopper, director at Kew, says the new technology is “bound to encourage people to visit us and experience Kew for themselves”. Follow this link to see the gardens on Streetview.

• On Now: Afghanistan’s heritage is on display in a newly opened exhibition at the British Museum. Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World showcases more than 200 objects from the National Museum of Afghanistan as well as some items from the British Museum and includes sculptures, ivory inlays once attached to furniture, Roman glassware and Egyptian stone tableware, and inlaid gold ornaments once worn by the area’s “nomadic elite”. The objects were found between 1937 and 1978 and were preserved thanks to officials who kept them out of harm’s way during the Soviet and Taliban eras. The museum announced this week that they would be joined by carved ivory fragments that were stolen from Afghanistan’s national museum in the early 1990s and only recently presented to the British Museum by a benefactor with the idea that they will eventually be returned to Kabul. The exhibition runs until 3rd July. There is an admission charge. For more information, see www.britishmuseum.org.