At least the strapline has gone

In another report from the Richmond & Twickenham Times, it appears that the awful 'Plants, People, Possibilities' strapline has been abolished, to be replaced by 'Royal Botanical Gardens'!

The cost of the change was apparently £800. Far too much, if it was just to come up with the blindingly obvious solution, but presumably far too little to pay for all the changes to the stationary, banners, Explorer, and other branding. What's been the true cost, I wonder?

U-turn on night time events?

It looks as if the 'we hear you' message from Stephen Hopper at the meeting for Friends on 15th March was just a palliative. Despite the cascades of objections received about the scheme (I was sent a 278 page document that contained them), the Richmond and Twickenham Times report that they're going ahead with doubling the number of night-time events.

The report has a photo of Kew residents standing outside the gardens holding placards : WORLD HERITAGE SITE? OR THEME PARK? I couldn't agree more.

From the horse's mouth

On Tuesday I went to the talk given by the director of Kew Professor Stephen Hopper about the plans for the future of the gardens. He turned out to be a charming Australian and I was quite won over (even if there was a lot of 'delivering outcomes' 'best practice' type terminology).

Licensing application

The good news is that as a result of public feedback, RBG Kew are 'considering':

• cutting the number of fireworks events from 15 to 8
• cutting the number of 'large events'
• revising their Sound Management Plan
• finishing large events by 10.30pm

I'm not sure whether that means they're going to consider these carefully and then reject, or if the above are confirmed. I'll report back with any news.

Financial predicament

What puts it all into context for me, and will make me more sympathetic (!) to RBG in future is the fact that their annual expenditure has risen in the last 20 years from £17m to £50m, and their government grant has been cut from 90% in 1991 to 50% in 2011. So I can see why they're being so ferocious over entrance fees and fund-raising generally. (Such a shame - a couple of bankers' bonuses would cover the whole lot.)

Future priorities

A major priority is to restore the Temperate House, which is in a parlous state and will cost £28m over 8 years. They'll also be refurbishing Climbers and Creepers, and using restoration ecology to repair damage (not sure what this means).

They're thinking of improving the whole visitor 'experience' by making a Landscape Master Plan, a key element of which, if I remember right, is the Breathing Planet Walk that will seemingly point people round the gardens in a set circuit, rather like the dreaded Explorer. I can't see that this is really such a good idea. The glory of Kew is that you wander round and discover things you didn't know were there. The signposting works perfectly well as it is.

Another perplexing and disruptive sounding plan is to rethink the Victoria Gate and make it more of a world class entrance. Apparently most visitors to Kew come from the tube station and go in through Victoria Gate which they feel is not impressive enough. I can't imagine how it could be much better than it is, and it doesn't sound like a good use of finances to me.

Something more attractive is the proposal to 'reconnect' Kew with the river, which would effectively mean having a riverside entrance to the gardens, and possibly also a footbridge over the Thames to Syon House or Brentford.

Coaches

After the talk, Prof H opened the floor, and among the questions asked were concerns about the numbers of coaches lining the Kew Road and running their engines for hours to keep the drivers warm in winter or cool in summer while the tourists were in the gardens. Good suggestions made by the audience were to create a proper coach park in the Kew Green area (there used to be one there, someone said) and/or to make provision for the drivers to go to a cafe in the gardens.

Theme Park and garish signs

Two questions close to my heart, from other members of the audience.With the push for more visitors to the gardens, how is RBG going to prevent it from becoming a theme park? This one was vehemently denied by the director, which was good, but I have a feeling that there might have been a discrepancy in interpretation of the term theme park between the questioner and Prof H.

The other question was about the signs for attractions: could these be more (I'm interpreting) dignified? Director of Content and Learning Angela McFarlane answered this one again in a positive sounding way but I had a similar impression that maybe not much notice will be taken.

Any other queries can be sent to the Director at: director@kew.org.

We're off to see the wizard

The director of Kew Prof Stephen Hopper has invited me (and a few thousand other Friends) to meet him next week, to hear about his plans for Kew. Should be interesting. Any suggestions for questions?

Edna Everage's gladioli

This year's aptly named orchid 'Extravaganza' is on, and in case you didn't see the billboard at the gate, here are some really large and... bright banners.

Inside the Princess of Wales greenhouse are some specially created displays, possibly inspired by the Academy Awards ceremony season. I'm not sure how these are done - some kind of grafting?

Luckily, for those who prefer something a bit more restrained, there are also some elegant single blooms, in pots.

First colour

Some colour to brighten the winter gloom. The Alpine House is full of small flowers like these irises.

And the annual orchidfest has started.

Pink bananas

This isn't new news, I'm afraid, but I found it while googling Kew's wonderful Millennium Seed Bank project and thought it was worth a post. Last year, the seed from the endangered pink banana was the last one in the then collecting goal of 10% of the world's plant species to protect from possible extinction.

The next target is 25% by 2020.

Very inspiring and worthwhile and the kind of thing that's really worth supporting. Go ahead and adopt a seed.

More room for the Explorer?

It looks as if the paths are being widened, a bit. I'm not sure if this is a measure to tidy up the badger digging, or to allow more room for the unwieldy Explorer juggernaut. Or for some other reason?

Very good news, if it's going to be done on all the Explorer routes. Pedestrians won't have to step off the paths into the grass/mud if they want to avoid being mown down.

Seeds walk no more?

Farewell to the Seeds. I see from the Kew Gardens site that the pleasing Seed Walk willow sculptures near the Main Gate have also only been showing temporarily and may have disappeared as I write.

They are (or were) 3-5 metres high/long and were hand-woven by Tom Hare. A giant sycamore pod, coco-de-mer and  devil's claw among others.

A new discovery

I happened upon a new (to me) greenhouse in Kew today. It's at the northern end of the Order Beds and houses 10 bonsai trees, rotated according to season. Some are 85 years old, like this Chinese juniper.

There's something quite magical about miniature things. The trunk and bark of this Japanese cedar are perfect.

It's hard work to keep them like this. "Bonsai require frequent watering. During the heat of summer, Kew’s bonsai specialist Richard Kernick checks and waters the collection up to three times daily. He re-pots around a quarter of the trees every spring; prunes in spring, summer and autumn; and wires branches in winter."

More information at the official Kew Gardens site.

Wounded Angel taken flight?

My favourite sculpture at Kew has gone from the woods between Victoria Gate and the Temperate House. Perhaps Emily Young has taken it back? She's a fantastically talented sculptor and I found 'Wounded Angel' very beautiful and moving. It's a shame.

You are being watched

Don’t bother even trying to show your season ticket to get into Kew if you get there later than 30 minutes before closing time.

In the past, the attendants would happily wave you through if you wanted a last-minute walk round the gardens, but no longer. Last week my other half was sheepishly refused entry because the attendant said he’d get into trouble if he let him in.

How would anyone know? Because somewhere behind the scenes is a person watching CCTV footage of people entering the gardens, with instructions to report misbehaving attendants.

I can see that CCTV has some good uses (for example: protecting attendants, who must feel quite vulnerable especially at the Lion Gate entrance where they work alone), but I don't think this is one of them. It would be nice if the attendants were allowed to exercise their common sense.

More on the proposed license

The Kew Society provides a good summary of the proposals.:

The new application is a major change from the existing one. The main differences are as
follows:

Major Public Events
✶ An increase in maximum attendance from 6,000 to 10,000
✶ An increase from 6 consecutive nights to any 12 nights per year
✶ An extension from 22.30 finish to 23.00 finish
✶ Can be located anywhere in the Gardens

Private events
✶ An extension from Midnight finish to 1.00 am finish
✶ Can be located anywhere in the Gardens
✶ Unlimited numbers of events with no maximum attendance

Fireworks
✶ Increase from 6 to 15 nights. Finish remains at 22.30, except for:
✶ Late fireworks New Year’s Eve

Other changes
✶ Specific noise restrictions (including measured decibel limits in the village) and traffic
controls for Summer Swing have been dropped. Weaker, generic sound management
and traffic management plans remain.
✶ The licence would cover the entire 300 acre site, giving Kew Gardens freedom to organize
events anywhere in the Gardens – unlike the existing licence which lists 18 specific venues
including two open air areas, with different controls for each venue.
✶ We understand that they intend to convert the Joseph Banks Building into a party/reception
venue for 400 people.

More late night partying at Kew

Kew want to extend the opening hours, but only for revellers - not for ordinary visitors. The summer concerts would now end at 11p.m. instead of 10.30. OK, doesn't sound too bad. But 'private events' would go on until 1 a.m. Not so good. The events won't be nature outings to spot interesting nocturnal wildlife but weddings, parties etc. Which means drunken revellers emerging on to the streets in the small hours, lurching hither and thither,  singing tunelessly and trying to find their cars.

We have until 13th January to object to the plans through Richmond Council.

Winding down for Christmas

The weather has been too much for the carousel...

But the snowpeople have been proliferating...

Snow

Like coming out of the wardrobe into Narnia today.

Seasonal cheer

Christmas has arrived at Kew and it looks like fun for all the family. At least, I think so.

There's a Victorian merry-go-round...(£2 whether adult or child)

A retro dodgem thingy...

A horse and carriage ride... (£3 adults, £2 children)...

Even the Explorer has gone all festive...

Nobody actually in or on anything today, but then it was a dingy midweek afternoon.

No ice skating rink again this year. Perhaps they decided it was not environmentally sound, or.... didn't make enough money? The last year it was there, in 2008, it seemed to attract very few takers.

Plenty of other places to skate in London though.

One down...

The PLANtastic play area ("An outdoor play area shaped like a plant!") which consisted of metal tubes to crawl through and lots of brightly coloured signs has been taken down and  is to be 'repurposed' at Wakehurst. Very good news, as it was down the quiet end of Kew, in the Conservation Zone.

Rhizotron-Schmizotron

A quick google tells me that 'rhizotron' is not a theme park ride or the sponsor's brand name, but unexpectedly, a real word, which means an underground laboratory for studying root growth.

Except that the Kew Rhizotron is a creative 'interpretation'. You go into a dark underground room and look at animated videos of worms and centipedes accompanied by scary scuttling and sucking sounds. And then you go up the treewalk, which is what you actually came to see.  

The Rhizotron installation took 14 months and over 20,000 'person' hours to build, and this is what Will Jackson, director of Engineered Arts says about it:

"The root sculpture in the Rhizotron fuses two aesthetics, natural and industrial. I wanted to create the feel of a boiler room made of tree roots, imagine the pipe work that services a large hotel, providing creature comforts for the guests, we could think of trees in the same way, they are the services providers for our
planet, creating oxygen and controlling our climate, they make our planet habitable. Arne Laub, Engineered Arts’ designer with a talent for solving systematic problems, was handed the task of creating a series of parts that could realize these concepts, the finished design required 46 unique forms and 567 parts in total.

We wanted to populate this underworld with the denizens of the ground, those creatures that inhabit tree roots and live in the soil. Automata artist Matt Smith created animated wooden creatures, stag beetles, centipedes and worms to inhabit the porthole spaces within the sculpture."

More here.

Syon vista in the snow

The dark colouring of the holm oaks make a fine contrast with the snow in the Syon Vista (planted 1845-6).