Kew Gardens

I met an old friend for a walk through Kew Gardens today.  It was a freezing cold day but the gardens looked wonderful.  The new Winter garden was full of snowdrops, aconites, witch hazel, camellias, dogwood, etc etc , and stunningly colourful.  Tickets for the Orchid Festival were sold out (I think this is the first year that you needed tickets so we were caught out).  The Temperate House has an exhibition of rare and extinct plants and how Kew helps to preserve them.

My main is the Palm House which is being emptied ahead of renovation.  What a job!  It's crammed full of enormous plants, including the oldest pot plant in the world: a Cycad that was collected in South Africa in 1773 and was one of the first plants to be moved into the Palm House in 1848.

This evening we went to the opening of the "Making Egypt" exhibition in Young V&A in Bethnal Green (extra).  The target audience is 8-15 years old, but adults were allowed too and it was great fun.