Kew Gardens
Kew is London's largest UNESCO World Heritage site offering unique landscapes and iconic architecture from every stage of the Gardens' history. The collection of living plants is the largest and most diverse in the world growing out in the Gardens and inside the glasshouses.
There are many attractions to explore at Kew which enables you to connect more closely with nature and discover a diverse variety of plants. The garden cover an area of around 121 hectares and makes it one of the largest botanical gardens in the world. Founded in 1840, Kew Gardens boasts over 30,000 different kinds of plants.
I have listed below some of the attractions that we saw on our visit, there are many more.
The Temperate House is the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world has reopened. This Grade I listed building is twice the size of the Palm House. It is home to an internationally important collection of temperate zone plants, including some of the rarest and most threatened.
The Palm House is an iconic Victorian glasshouse, the rainforest climate inside supports a unique collection of tropical plants from some of the most threatened environments on Earth.
The Hive is a unique futuristic structure, inspired by research into the health of bees. It was designed by the UK based artist Wolfgang Buttress. The Hive is an open structure standing 56feet tall and weighing some 40 tonnes. It is made from around 170,000 individual components that make up an fascinating honeycomb structure. When close to it the hive creates a unique sound caused by the wind as it blows through it.
The Princess of Wales Conservatory contains plants from ten different climate zones including cacti, orchids, carnivorous plants and the remarkable Titan arum, which produces one of the largest flowering structures and foulest odours in the plant kingdom.
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