LONDON 2: COVID scare, giant lily pads, pyramidal hedges

Waterlily House, Kew Gardens

We 25 May 

COVID scare

Doug woke up feeling a little under the weather. Nothing like a fever, but a bit of scratchy throat. Of course the first worry that comes to mind is COVID. I reminded him that I had brought 4 of the free testing kits available to anyone in the US (you can get up to 8 kits per household). 

A line at T would have been positive

Doug took the test and whew, it came up negative! We then proceeded as originally planned, but Doug wore a mask much of today, and I wore a mask on the Tube. Every time we've ridden the Tube there's been at least one other person wearing a mask, sometimes four or five, but most are maskless at this point.

Update on COVID testing for return to the US

A good friend who has lived in England, and has been back here recently, told me this about COVID testing for US re-entry: "...the US accepts lateral flow tests. It's only 35 pounds at the airport. Super fast, easy, and convenient!"

I told Doug, but he was inclined to keep our Sunday AM testing appointments, since he'd already made them. Our daughter had told us she'd made an appointment in London for her visiting boyfriend, when he went back to the US, so that's what Doug did. It's a little cheaper than 35 pounds, but we have to go there. Anyway, it's something to be aware of.

It was a Common Wood Pigeon!

Hurray, I myself didn't know the answer to yesterday's bird identification question, but given that three different people supplied the same answer—Common Wood Pigeon—I assume that is the correct answer! I looked it up, and it is a European bird, which made me happy. I *thought* it was a novel bird (to me) and it was. Kudos to the bird people!

By the way, I've been quite tickled to see so many London Plane trees here in London. No wonder they got that name. One at Kew Gardens is huge and around 250 years old. We also saw one in Bath that was over 220 years old. Go trees!

Kew Gardens, aka The Royal Botanical Gardens

Today we took the Tube out to Kew Gardens, which we knew was a famous botanical garden. We've been to a LOT of botanical gardens, though, so we kind of expected more of the same. We started off on our own, and went to the Palm House, and the Temperate House, two large, impressive Victorian-era green houses containing, you guessed it, palms and temperate zone plants. The greenhouses were great, but I have to say my strongest impression of the Palm House was how much it is rusting away with the constant moisture, and how ornate the Victorians were. There's wrought iron spiral staircases that let you walk along an upper story viewing area. Which is not to say that the plant collections aren't fabulous, but that they weren't my main impression, at that point. 

(I later found out the Palm House will be fixed up at some point, but it will be a very big deal, because among other things, all the plants need to be relocated in the meantime. They already fixed up the Temperate House, but it took five years and a lot of money.)

Fortunately we elected to try for the 1:30 free tour, and luckily we got a great tour guide and a great tour group (of just five people besides us). I'd been afraid the guide would repeat what we'd already seen, but she took us to completely different areas: the Rock Garden, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the Alpine House. 

Rock Garden in front of Alpine House

Alpine House interior, filled with dry air

Plus the guide knew a lot about plants, as well as about the Kew Gardens history, and the group as a whole had a nice sense of interest and camaraderie. We kept going for an hour and a half; the tour is usually just an hour. We learned about flowers that change color after being pollinated (that explains the two colors of flowers on horse chestnut trees, too), and about a tree that has bluer foliage in the sun, greener foliage in the parts of it that are more shaded. Her tour helped inspire a sense of wonder at all the forms plants take, and all the clever coping mechanisms they have.

If I were advising a first-time visitor to Kew Gardens, first of all I'd say the place is enormous. For repeat visitors, it must be great because you could probably find new things to look at every time. For first-timers, I'd recommend the area the guide took us to: the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which is more recently built and contains a broad variety of plants in different rooms, the Alpine House, the Rock Garden. Try to get a good tour guide, like the one we had. Plus I would definitely recommend the Waterlily House, which we went to later, on our own. For me, seeing a giant water LILy pad was probably the highlight of our visit (see photo at top of post)! I also enjoyed artificially shaped hedges...

There's a four or five story tall "Treetop Walkway" which has a kind of wow factor, but less botanical info we felt. We thought the walkway would take more advantage of being high up in the tree canopies to talk about what happens there, but it didn't, though it did have many kid-oriented factoids about trees.

One interesting thing the Gardens is doing this summer is that they have a number of artworks scattered around, that have to do with the topic of plants as food. There's certainly the space for changing exhibits like this, and it adds interest and topicality. I would like to have visited more of the installations, if we weren't already so exhausted by looking at everything else. At least Kew Gardens helps you out by having a number of places that offer refreshments and have toilet facilities; when you get bogged down mid-afternoon, you can get a cappuccino and lemon drizzle cake at the Orangery instead of having to go back to the entrance area.

Much of Kew is indeed similar to other botanical gardens, but what made it stand out in the end was:

• a great tour guide
• the size and scope of their plant collection; they are actively involved in trying to save rarer plants from extinction, and I did see unusual plants I hadn't seen before
• the extent of their plant information; there's lots of informative panels, not just plant labels
• the evocation of another era in the older Victorian era greenhouses and things like a pagoda (!), plus the carefully manicured "Broad Walk" also reflects an era of promenading
• the info and art installations having to do with issues of the day, e.g. the dangers of monoculture (our guide reminded us that most of the food people eat is wheat, rice, and/or corn, when many other kinds of grains and edible plants exist)

Next Post

Tomorrow my wonderful Activities Planner has booked us on a tour of the Globe Theater; we also hope to peek at the Tate Art Museum, and then go to an evening theater performance. Some activities, like the Globe Theater, you need to book at least somewhat in advance, or else desired time slots will fill up.

It will be a long day tomorrow, so it will probably be a very short blog post, or I may skip it and catch up Friday night for both days, or maybe catch up post-trip. I think I've already mentioned I want to do a post-trip post about our food, one for sure on Favorite Signs, and one on favorite memories from the trip.