Showing posts with label greenhouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greenhouse. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 March 2019

Orchid Festival 2019

A few weeks ago, Mom and Dad came to stay for a long weekend. (It's taken a while to get through the photos and updating the blog.) 
On the Friday we went to the Orchid Festival at Kew Gardens. (I think this was the main reason Mom wanted to come visit. It had little to do with me!) We missed it last year thanks to the snow and colds everywhere.  And going on a Friday was much better and a lot less crowded.





Panther.


Mom really enjoyed, which was expected. The greenhouse was very impressive.


Happy mom.
This year they partnered the orchids with bromeliads (Mom told me about them - my gardening skills are minimal). I loved these little flowers. They are so weird and different.

Purple bromeliad.

and a red one.
At the main display, we found some really weird plants. We have no idea if they are flowers, or leaves. But I want one.

Green ... flower?
They usually focus on a few areas and do up a big display. I loved this years sloth.

So cute.

Orchid birds.

Atzec gold


Funky little flower.





Origami butterflies.
The squirting dolphin gave a few people a scare and amuse quite a few kids (including myself).
Squirting dolphin.
After throughly exploring the orchid greenhouse, we had a wonder around the garden. There wasn't much to see as spring is still on its way but it was a nice walk. The Palm house was open though I was really disappointed to see they have closed the aquarium in the basement. I really liked that place.
Green man.

Around the top of the Palm house.


I was also really excited to see the tropical house is now open (it's been shut for refurbishment for the past 3 years at least). It will take some time for it to become really established but it was worth the walk.


The new Tropical house.
We had a really chilled out night and the next day, just going for lunch in Kingston and walk along the river.


Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Wisely and Taste of Autumn

Last year I ended up at Wisley Gardens for their taste of Autumn festival mostly by accident. This year I planned it. The weather hasn't been great (thanks to Storm Brian) but there were sunny spells and I only had to take cover a few times.


The fountain.
Still flowers out

But Autumn is here.



Looking up to the rock garden.
I enjoyed the greenhouse - it was so nice to be warm but it did take some time for my camera to de-steam.


Spanish Moss.







Bottom of the rock gardens.







Looking over the park.
They also have a lovely bonsai tree walk. All of the trees are between 30 and 80 years old.



The stalls area wasn't as busy as last time, I guess due to the weather. And they did have the apple selection. Last year they had stalls of loads of different apples to taste and buy but this year their orchards were hit with disease so they couldn't. Still they had lots of different stalls (an amazing number selling cheese!) so plenty to buy.





I added to my Christmas presents (I started early this year) and left after noon. I was planning to stay for lunch but the lunch stalls weren't there this year either. So I spent the afternoon (and rest of the weekend) relaxing.
Today I won second place in our data Bake off. (I was never going to win over the syrup soaked donuts!) So I'll take second happily!