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Established in 1759, the Royal Botanical Gardens have grown from
their original eight acres into a 300-acre site in which more than
33,000 species are grown in plantations and glasshouses, a display that
attracts over a million visitors every year, most of them with no
specialist interest at all. There's always something to see, whatever
the season, but to get the most out of the place, come sometime between
spring and autumn, bring a picnic and stay for the day. The only
drawbacks to Kew are the high entry fee, and the fact that it lies on
the main (and very noisy) flight path to Heathrow.
There are four
entry points to the gardens, but the majority of people arrive at Kew
Gardens tube and train station, a few minutes' walk east of the
Victoria Gate . Of all the glasshouses, by far the most celebrated
is the Palm House, a curvaceous mound of glass and wrought-iron
designed by Decimus Burton in the 1840s. Its drippingly humid atmosphere
nurtures most of the known palm species, while there's a small but
excellent tropical aquarium in the basement. South of here is the
largest of the glasshouses, the Temperate House, which contains
plants from every continent, including one of the largest indoor palms
in the world, the sixty-foot Chilean Wine Palm.
Kew's origins as an eighteenth-century royal pleasure garden are
evident
in the numerous follies dotted about the gardens, the most conspicuous
of which is the ten-storey, 163-foot-high Pagoda, visible to the
south of the Temperate House.
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The three-storey red-brick mansion of
Kew Palace, to the northwest of the Palm House, bought by George II
as a nursery for his umpteen children, has recently been restored and is
worth a peek (there is a separate entrance charge). A sure way to lose
the crowds is to head for the thickly wooded, southwestern section of
the park around Queen Charlotte's Cottage (April-Sept Sat & Sun
10.30am-4pm; free), a tiny thatched summerhouse built in the 1770s as a
royal picnic spot for George III's queen.
Daily 9.30am-7.30pm or dusk; £5; www.kew.org. Tube: Kew Gardens.
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