Kew Gardens in the Rain
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06.06.2021
After many months of being out of bounds, glasshouses around the UK reopened on 17th May. In my book this is cause for celebration, I really missed spending time under glass, especially over winter when everything else was grey, cold and miserable. Ed and I made the trip down to London on Friday to visit Kew Gardens for the first time in two years, as he had the week off school for half term. It rained, all day, but nothing could dampen our spirits.
The glasshouses themselves aren’t quite the spontaneous free for all of the Before Times, but they are a joy to explore all the same. You have to queue to get into them, wear a mask, and follow a one way system which renders large areas of the glasshouses out of bounds behind barriers, but still. It was really good to be back inside them after all this time. One day, who knows when, these safety measures will be behind us and we can freely explore glasshouses without restriction. Until then, I’ll celebrate the small wins.
There is one benefit to all the barriers though, and that’s pictures without people in them! These empty glasshouse scenes were made possible by barriers blocking pathways, keeping fellow glasshouse dwellers out of frame. It’s not quite a silver lining, but a small perk.
Of course I had to get my fix of ginkgo. Ed patiently sat on a bench under cover of glass and waited for me to be finished with photographing rain diamonds.
As it was raining we spent some time in the Marianne North Gallery which is filled with more than 800 oil paintings of botanical scenes. Marianne North was a wealthy Victorian woman, born in 1830, who dedicated her life to painting flowers. She travelled the world, documenting plants and landscapes in a photorealistic manner, and then paid for this gallery to be designed and built to showcase her work upon her return to England. Each of the paintings in the gallery was placed by Marianne herself, and she also painted frescos on the doors and around the gallery. As such, the building is listed and has been left unchanged since she died. Marianne North led a fascinating life and was a trailblazer in an era when women didn’t have many opportunities to further their careers or dream beyond their families.
Ed, ever the optimist, hadn’t packed an umbrella or a raincoat. As such, the first thing we did upon arrival was buy him an emergency poncho and an umbrella. It’s been folded up and will be reused so it won’t go to waste. I hate single use plastic, but the alternative was him getting drenched.
Lovely sap green new growth on the redwoods.
It was hard work taking photos in the Palm House because the humidity was so high that my lens steamed up within seconds. Coupled with a face mask that blew steam out of the top and into my viewfinder, things started to look murky very quickly. I think it’s because all the doors were closed and they were watering, as it wasn’t that humid when we visited in 2018 and 2019.
