We Kew'd Up Another UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Royal Botanic Gardens, known as Kew Gardens, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated in 2003 because, in the words of the UNESCO World Heritage website:

This historic landscape garden features elements that illustrate significant periods of the art of gardens from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The gardens house botanic collections (conserved plants, living plants and documents) that have been considerably enriched through the centuries. Since their creation in 1759, the gardens have made a significant and uninterrupted contribution to the study of plant diversity and economic botany.

We had never been, primarily because it has only been in recent years that I've gotten interested in flowers and gardens.  And, of course, my interest in going was heightened by learning it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because, as faithful readers of the blog know, "UNESCO means you must go!" (see, it rhymes, which is why it is so catchy and ought to be the (pronounced:) U-NES-CO international slogan.

Kew Gardens is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.  Ted Lasso fans will recognize that borough as the home of Ted Lasso's AFC Richmond fictional soccer football team.  Alas, we did not have time to walk around Richmond to see the Ted Lasso sights (AFC Richmond is our second favorite British football team -- the Wrexham Dragons are our second favorite.)

The Tube stop for Kew Gardens (surprisingly named "Kew Gardens" lets out into a very charming village part of Richmond, with shops and pubs and, well, very charming British village stuff, which is why it is a very charming village ("VCV") part of Richmond.

(Editor: Okay, I think the readers get that its a charming area.  Writer: Then my goal has been achieved.)

It's a short walk through the VCV to get to the entrance to Kew Gardens.  There are over 50,000 plants, many of which are trees, large plants, flowers, shrubbery (there were no knights of Ni! demanding a shrubbery to allow us to pass, which was both a relief and a disappointment).

I'm not sure how many times I

watched Monty Python and the Holy

Grail in the late '70s, but it was more

times than the countdown for throwing

the holy hand grenade.

We headed first to the Palm House, which is essentially an indoor rainforest which has tropical plants from all over the tropics (which is why they are called "tropical plants!")

Out behind it was a garden of various types of roses features many varieties and easily has hundreds, if not more than one thousand, roses.

Rick and Sandy ended up staying much longer, but Carol and I had a "Slow Horses" Tour to get to, and 21 tube stops to get there (Old Street Station).  

So our next stop was the popular with everyone, but especially kids, "Treetop Walkway."  And from the sound of it, by "kids" I meant "banshees" as we could hear them shouting at each other in the tree tops from a long way away.  

We climbed the stairs up 60 feet to the platform which showed us the magic of the tops of trees up close.  

As you can imagine, I did not take

this photo of the treetop walkway

from above.  I include it to give you

a good idea of what it is like.

After we finished the treetop walkway, it was nearly time to go, so we went into the Temperate House (the Victorian glasshouse in the background of the above photo) and glided past rare and threatened plants.

At that point, alas, it was time to leave.  Rick and Sandy, on the other hand, not having watched "Slow Horses" stayed most of the day at Kew Gardens and really enjoyed it.  If time on a future visit to London, I would want to go back to Kew Gardens and see a lot more.  Carol and I covered a little bit out of the 326 acres, which is a lot bigger than Winnie-the-Pooh's 100 acre wood inspired by Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

On our way out, we had some confusion about how to top up our week-long Tube Pass, called, for some reason, the Oyster Card.  Okay, so it's not just a rhetorical question, because I looked it up:

The name "Oyster" was chosen because of the metaphorical idea of security and value associated with a pearl inside an oyster shell. Additionally, the Thames Estuary is known for its oyster beds, and the popular idiom "the world is your oyster" suggests that the card, like a pearl, unlocks access and opportunities. 

(Editor: Well, that's two paragraphs spent on useless trivia.  Writer: There is NOTHING trivial about information about oysters!  Yeah, Richard Cogan, that previous sentence is for you -- let's see if you read this far in the post!)