We’ve just come back from the Orchid Festival in Kew Gardens, which has started this weekend and will last until 5 March, so go get your tickets, don’t miss out on this great exhibition of fabulous flowers! Not that Kew Gardens wouldn’t already be awesome enough without any festivals or special events, but this Festival really tops everything we’ve seen so far at Kew Gardens, the variety of flowers on show and the dazzling beauty of many of these flowers is just mind-boggling.
Kew Gardens have done a great job at curating this exhibition. We were thoroughly blown away by it, but it seems to work just as well for families and children, old folks, and even experts in the field, overhearing some of the conversations of bystanders. It’s also nice that you can venture into side rooms where ferns, carnivorous plants (the humorous label is “not so vegetarian vegetables”; the POTATO is labelled as carnivorous because it has sticky hairs on its stems that glue insects to itself, then, when they die, they fertilise the potato plant – it will definitely feel more thrilling to munch on French fries next time around; more actively carnivorous plants included venus fly trap varieties from the tropics, including one variety very recently discovered by Kew Gardens scientists, and various common, moderate climate species, of whose existence we had not been aware) or cactuses and succulents are being shown.
The architecture is also very appealing. Moreover, the Vanda orchids hanging from the ceiling seemed to attract a lot of attention, and we found the signposts on medicinal uses of orchids, their meaning in Indian tradition, mythology, and religion interesting. Best of all, Kew Gardens do not charge anything on top of regular admission for this beautiful festival, so for £15 per adult you can enjoy a pleasant 2 to 5 hours surrounded by some of the most amazing plants of the planet.
