Kew Gardens I and Skywatch Friday

Grace was in Europe for a business trip in early May and stopped by London for a very short visit.  However, She still found time to sneak out to Kew Gardens for a half-day visit.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, commonly known as Kew Gardens is in southwest London.  It was created in 1759 and contains the world's largest collection of living plants.  The liviing collections include more than 30,000 different plants and the herbarium has over 7 million preserved plant specimens.  The gardens are visited by 2 million visitors every year.

This is the famous Palm House.  It is a green house specialized in growing palms.  Palm trees need constant tropical temperature and the palm houses were built in the Victorian era as status symbols.  The Palm House in the Kew garden was built between 1844 to 1848.

The Kew Palace is the smallest British Royal Palace. It was built in 1631 by a Dutch merchant and later on bought by the Royal family.

This is Queen Charlotte's Cottage looking over through a field of bluebells.  The cottage was a wedding present of King George III to Queen Charlotte.

This is the building known as "Museum No, 1".  It is across from the Palm House and was opened in 1857.

Temperate House has twice the floor space of the Palm House and is the world largest surviving Victorian glass structure.

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