GrowGirl.com – Diary – Week May 22nd – 28th
Playing hooky from my allotment at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens
with family from Australia, taking a break from the watering and weeding at the
vegetable allotment and heavy digging up of my new flower-bee allotment, in
Oxfordshire.
We catch-up over coffee and lunch at Kew’s Victoria Gate
eatery and glorious shop then saunter over to view the grounds from the
exciting Treetop Walk. After lunch, we
visit the Woodland Garden where on a huge clump of Nepeta by the Peony
collection, a mass of feverishly pollen-collecting bees, attract my photo-snapping
friend’s attention. Apparently, there
are no honeybees to be seen in Australia and, determined to have a photo to
take home, my friend zooms in on the busy bees, whose attention they keenly
ignore.
Then to revisit The Hive, the prize-winning British design
by Nottingham-based Wolfgang Buttress for the 2015 Milan International Expo,
installed at Kew for its summer installation on Saturday, 18th June, and the
highlight of our 2016 Kew get-together.
The giant aluminium construction is linked to a real bee hive in the
Gardens, where a sensor picks-up and translates every bee activity into a sound
and light show within The Hive. Light
bulbs flash and waves of changing sound fill the structure, fascinating and
delightful to all visitors. A beautiful
wild flower meadow, including Campion, Dianthus and Ribwort plantain surrounds
The Hive, which departs Kew Gardens later this year, making us grateful we could
view it again. Helpful staff were on
hand to highlight the bees struggle to survive.
We complete our day with a glass of wine and a little
must-do holiday shopping as another glorious Kew day ends, tearing ourselves
away and heading home-bound. Compelling
amongst an impressive list of highlights, the Nepeta bush is a must-have plant
for my flower-bee allotment, which I will look for at one of my local
plant-garden centres this weekend. Also,
a few Alliums for my herbaceous border, simply because of their height and
stunning flower-head.
Margaret Halstead
Copyright © Margaret Halstead 2017
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