Kew Gardens in the rain

My day

After living just 9 km away from it for the best part of nine months, I finally got around to visiting Kew today. The weather wasn't great, but it was massive and impressive and my NHM badge got me in for free! The museum has this partnership with many institutions around the world, allowing staff to visit around as they please. Try not to think too hard about the fact that the NHM is free anyway.

I had an interesting walk through West London on my way there. I quite like wandering through residential areas, but the Chiswick Roundabout (which has its own Wikipedia page) manages to have a huge number of pedestrian crossings and still be terrifying. The silver lining was that my route led me over the roundabout itself, where I found its art installation:

 

Inside Kew, my first stop was a lovely medicinal garden in which my nice camera died. By the time I realised I had an auxiliary camera, I was in the bamboo garden, so that is where our tour begins. The centrepiece of the garden was a house:

Built in Japan something like 100 years ago, it demonstrated some of bamboo's many, many uses. The walls were equivalent to wattle and daub, and the roof was a very impressive structure supported by massive poles:

I took so many photos of this. Clearly spent too much time with engineering students.

I then left this exotic masterpiece for ancient British woodland, when it appropriately began to rain. It drizzled on and off all day. I met other tourists flapping with raincoats and ponchos and exchanged wry smiles of solidarity. I also, by huge coincidence, met one of my housemates and her parents sheltering in an art gallery. But we're not here to talk about art.

According to the map, on the way to the ancient woodland was a giant badger sett. I've never seen much of badgers so this was exciting. It wasn't quite what I expected.

Note: not a real badger

Fun though! Even if it was quite a squeeze to get in, and I'm only a medium-sized human.

But there were real animals:

See the scaffolding around the pagoda in the background? There was quite a lot of restoration work going on. The good news was that, with closures, I had time to see nearly everything else in one day.

This included the treetop walkway...

...which was a bit scary because the metal was bending under my feet.

I tried to stay on parts that looked like they'd at least heard of safety regulations

After a lot of wandering around, happily eating sandwiches in the rain, I popped out next to that iconic Kew building, the palm house:

The front was a very neat walkway with sculptures and benches. There are benches everywhere, which was great, and most of them are dedicated. This was my favourite:

Eyes watering already

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the palm house as well as I'd have liked because I wear glasses, which went opaque. But there was another impressive tall walkway, and I blearily found some really cool plants. For example, behold the Cavendish banana, through which humankind is held on a global banana precipice:

Then I crossed over to the other enormous glasshouse open today, the Princess of Wales Conservatory. Smith (doing London to the max) went to Kew the other week and said that this was not to be missed. She was quite right. It's truly massive, showing a variety of warm to tropical climates with a huge number of plants. Some highlights:

Welwitschia (named after a Mr Welwitsch):

Pebble plants (Lithops, meaning 'face of stone'):

And the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum, meaning 'giant oddly-shaped penis'):

Quite right too

 There was also a great series of tanks and ponds for aquatic plants... and fish! As much as I've embraced botany over the years, they can't compete with fish. There was a chillaxed pufferfish!

And several giant, giant fish of which one was a carp and another was a dazzling catfish and none I photographed adequately.

Another fish I didn't get a picture of was the piranha. It was hanging out at the back of its tank when I arrived. A lady was telling a small child about its vicious reputation. I mentioned that, when my friend was there recently, the piranha had been chasing visitors as they passed the tank. Not today. I moved on. I looked back to see the child pressing a teddy up against the glass and the piranha was suddenly incensed.

After that wonderful glasshouse, I popped into the little alpine section and was surprised to see evidence of Teletubbies in captivity:

And, after more wonderful outdoor gardens, took my final photo in the bonsai house, bringing this pixel-heavy story to a circular conclusion:

It's a juniper. I adore dinky things; apparently this extends to trees too.

In conclusion: bravo, Kew. Though I can't comment on your value for money, hooray!