Kew Garden

The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew usually called lies on the South bank of the river Thames between Richmond and Kew in 121 hectares in London, England. It is on the Heathrow Airport flight path, so every few minute noisy planes go overhead.

Kew garden's Victoria entrance

 Kew was created in 1759 and the garden celebrated its 250 years 2009 (I was lucky to visit there at that time)

 

It’s the world’s most important botanical gardens. It has a large collection of about 50,000 different plant species as well as many impressive buildings such as the Palm House and the 10 story Pagoda in the 132 ha (326 acres) of garden area.

In 1759 Princess Augusta, mother of King George III, started developing a 3.6 ha large garden. After it was inherited by King George III and he placed Joseph Banks in charge  of enlarging and planting the combined garden. After returning from a journey around the world with Captain Cook Joseph collected various plants from all over the world. In 1841 the Kew Gardens were donated to the state after which green houses were added which includes the famous Palm house and Temperate house. In 2003 Kew Gardens was put on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

GREEN HOUSES

Palm House (1844-1848)

Back view of Palm house

Spiral Stair Inside the Palm house

Designed by Decimus Burton and Richard Turner is a graceful iron structure with magnificent glass. One can find plants from Tropical Rainforest. Walk up the spiral staircase to the footbridge inside the Palm house where the temperature and humidity is high and the view looks good from the top of the tree.

Waterlilly House (1852)

Water lilly house

 It is situated right side of the Palm house. It contains all types of water lilies from to smaller ones. Though it’s not much visited you can find various kinds of plant inside this house.

Temperate House (1859-1899)

Temperate House from Tree Top walkway

Designed by Richard Burton is the largest greenhouse in Kew Gardens. It took 40 years to complete it and was opened in 1899. At that time it was the world’s largest greenhouse.

Prince of Wales Conservatory (1987)

This building has 10 different climatic zones, ranging from desrt on one end to tropical at the other end.

Way to the top

Treetop Walkway

Apart from the Green houses there are other interesting buildings like Pagoda, Queen Charlotte’s cottage, Treetop walkway. Treetop walkway (Xstrata Treetop Walkway) has a wonderful view of some of the greenhouses at the far end while having a feeling of walking midst of the canopy of world of trees. This is a popular attraction at the Kew Gardens which has a platform 18m (59ft) above the ground having a walkway of about 200m (656 ft). This was designed by Marks Barfield Architects.

There are more places to visit like Museum in front of Palm house etc. Underground the Palm house is a marine display though it not much interesting its good to have a look.   

Plant+People museum and the pond with Hercules fountain

Its better if you spend a whole day at Kew. Pack your lunch and enjoy your visit.

For Price, time in and out and other informations click here

London eye

Originally Ferris wheel was designed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., as a landmark for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The wheel was intended as a rival to the Eiffel tower (Ht 80 mts). The term Ferris wheel came to be used for all such rides.

London eye (The Merline Entertainments London Eye) is the largest ferris wheel (Ht 135 mts) in Europe. It was erected in December 31 1999. Untill a until it was surpassed by the Star of Nanchang (160 m) in May 2006, and then the Singapore Flyer (165 m) on 11 February 2008.

Corpus Clock

The Corpus Clock is a large sculptural clock. Its a £1m clock called as "time eater" which was unveiled by Professor Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University.

As the News has reported, the mechanical clock has been designed and paid for by Dr John Taylor, an honorary fellow at the college, and it has pride of place on the college's new library, which is also funded by him. The timepiece was a tribute to English clockmaker John Harrison who solved the problem of longitude in the 18th century.

The clock is powered by a pendulum, driven by a mechanism in the shape of a giant grasshopper.

The grasshopper or "chronophage", meaning "time eater", advances around the 4ft-wide face, each step marking a second. Its movement triggers blue flashing lights which travel across the face eventually stopping at the correct hour and minute. But the clock is only accurate once every five minutes - the rest of the time the lights are simply for decoration.

Dr Taylor told the News: "It is my way of giving something back to my old college and to Cambridge - and I expect the clock will last for 200 years."