GARDEN TO VISIT Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

From the festive illuminations to the heated glasshouses, there are lots of reasons to make a winter visit to Kew, says Louise Curley

As dusk falls in winter, Kew Gardens are transformed into a glittering wonderland. The annual Christmas event here is a seasonal extravaganza from late November to early January, where the gardens are lit by more than a million lights, from glittering spiral trees to silvery shards and dangling ribbons of light.

There are singing holly bushes and a flickering fire garden and this year the Temperate House will become a canvas for a kaleidoscopic laser show, while jets of light dance across the Palm House pond. Stoked up with a cup of mulled cider, hot chocolate and marshmallows, it’s a fabulous evening out that starts at dusk – but booking is essential.

For daytime visitors the thrills are more botanical. If you’re intent on escaping the cold, Kew’s magnificent glasshouses are the ideal place to marvel at tender plants from farflung places. Established in 1759, the Royal Botanic Gardens has become a home for plants from across the world, a centre for botanical science and education, with the iconic glasshouses at their heart. The Palm House, completed in 1848, is the oldest of the greenhouses and home to an indoor rainforest. It’s heated to at least 18C (64F) all year round and this, coupled with the high humidity, means you can instantly forget you’re in west London in the middle of winter. This tropical collection includes some of the world’s most endangered plant species; you can see ancient cycads, the world’s oldest potted plant (Encephalartos altensteinii, growing in a pot since 1775!), and the Madagascan periwinkle, which is used in the treatment of cancer.

The conditions inside the glasshouse allow these plants to thrive thousands of miles from their native habitat, but this does bring with it a unique set of problems. The high humidity means the floor needs

to be pressure-washed four times a year to remove algae, and while the lower panes of glass are cleaned by the Kew team two to three times a year, the rest of the 16,000 panes of glass (some of them curved and very expensive) need to be tackled by specialist window cleaners, so this task is carried out every other year.

The Temperate Glasshouse is the world’s largest Victorian-built greenhouse. This spectacular glass and metal structure was opened in 1863, but, because of the scale of the building, it took another 36 years for it to be completed. It’s home to 1,500 species from Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific that all need temperatures above 10C (50F). By 2013 the condition of the Temperate Glasshouse had deteriorated so much that some plants were starting to suffer and the structure had become unsafe, so Kew embarked on a mammoth restoration project. Plants were moved to keep them safe during the building work and every section of the intricate ironwork frame was painstakingly restored and painted with specialist oil rig paint. An automatic window-opening system, which is much more able to respond to the changing weather and environment in the glasshouse, replaced the old iron ‘rod and cog’ system and a new bio-mass boiler now provides the heat.

The whole restoration took five years, but rare plants such as Eucalyptus morrisbyi from Tasmania, the only surviving example of Trochetiopsis erythroxylon (St Helena redwood) and Leucospermum conocarpodendron (tree pincushion) from South

Africa, have settled back into

You can instantly forget you’re in west London in the middle of winter

IN FROM THE COLD (clockwise from above left) Find an indoor rainforest in the Palm House; inside the restored Temperate Glasshouse; Princess of Wales Conservatory in the snow; the mesmerising Hive installation depicts life in a beehive INSET Musa basjoo

their restored home very nicely. New introductions have been added, some of which were grown from the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst in Sussex. There are plenty of outdoor highlights too – colourful cornus stems, fragrant shrubs and the stark silhouettes of leafless trees in the arboretum. Whether it’s Kew’s natural wonders or the fabulous festive light spectacular, a visit here is sure to banish the winter blues. ✿

Now in its seventh year, the Christmas at Kew extravaganza runs from late November to early January – a sparkly way to banish winter blues!

Stunning laser shows are projected on to the iconic Palm House, built in 1848

The gardens are lit by more than a million lights