It isn’t all snow and wet and dark here in London.  Spring is on the way!  Last weekend¹, Susan and I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew to enjoy the first flowers and a bit of blue sky.

Early spring flowers at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew

We woke Sunday morning to a beautiful blue sky and decided that we absolutely had to get out of the house and explore a bit.  Of course, given the vagaries of the weather and the time it took to figure out what we actually wanted to do with the day, by the time we actually arrived at Kew, it was gray and overcast.  Only slightly daunted, we stuck with it, and were rewarded.

We didn’t see much of the town of Kew itself between the train station and the Gardens, but what we saw seemed lovely in that postcard-perfect modern-gentrified-Victoriania sort of way.  Well, I suppose that if anybody has a right to Victoriania nostalgia, it would have to be the Londoners…

The Gardens themselves are…  Amazing.  Defying description.  They are vast for one thing.  We allowed ourselves most of the afternoon, but that turned out to be only enough to barely scratch the surface.

Shortly after arriving, the threatening gray (grey, here, I suppose) clouds opened up and deluged on us.  Complete with thunder and everything — much more violent weather than they usually expect for here.  So we sought refuge in a handy one of the six significant greenhouses on the grounds.

The tropical house itself is one of those Victorian monuments to elaboration, complete with filigreed wrought-iron spiral staircases leading to a catwalk that carries you through the canopy of the tropical trees:

Spiral stair to the catwalk

Susan in the canopy of the indoor tropical jungle

Overlooking the jungle

We discovered that there was even a small aquarium in the basement of the building — a strange find for a gardens.  Though they did have a lot of information on aquatic plants.

Fortunately, London really is the land of “wait 5 minutes and the weather will change” and by the time we had had our fill of the tropical house, the weather had cleared and we got some of the blue sky we had been seeking.

The Gardens really are immense and I don’t have time to describe our entire trip, let alone the Gardens as a whole (most of which we didn’t actually see).  But, really, it was mostly just an excuse to wander around on a lovely early spring afternoon and enjoy the first flowers and and the budding trees.  So pictures will probably tell the story better than I could anyway:

Entrance to the water lily pavilion

No water lilies in the pavilion this time of year, but there was a display of spring orchids on

Snow drops! Possibly the most popular flower there, in early March.

The rock garden

A treetop walkway -- one of our favorite features of the Gardens

View from the walkway. It was beautiful in March -- I'm sure it will be breathtaking once all the leaves come in.

Greek and Mediterranean garden

A sample of the myriad of small flowers that randomly dotted the lawns

[1] Er. I guess it’s actually two weekends ago now, as I finish writing this post. Oops.