We stumbled into Gardens of Glass and Greenhouses of exotic plants.
“Let's go to Kew Gardens tomorrow,” Jian announced after supper. He had taken on the responsibility of planning our daily trip, at which he had done a very good job. The weather was very promising. We were fed up with the first week in London, cool and rainy. Now it was going to be a fine day for outing on May 27th, 2005.
Occupying 300 acres of land and collecting over 40,000 plants from all over the world, Kew Gardens is one of the greatest public gardens in Britain and possibly in the world. Listed as world heritage sites by UNESCO in 2003, its history can be dated back to 1759. But what made it even more exciting for us was Dale Chihuly’s exhibition (May 28, 2005 -- January 15 2006) ready to open in Kew Gardens.
It turned out we made a good choice to take advantage of fine weather and smaller crowd before the opening ceremony of the exhibition. Still there were quite a few visitors. We had to queue up (stand in line) at the Victoria Gate to buy tickets. As soon as we stepped into the garden gate we were immediately drawn to a lake dotted with colorful glass bubbles and many different kinds of waterbirds swimming among them. Our camera captured a few of them resting on the shore such as white beak coots and red-billed moorhens. The most attractive was a boatload of glassworks, called Thames Skiff glittering in the sunshine.
Never before had we encountered such a wonder, we lost no time capturing the spectacle with our camera. Jian took pictures, one after another, of the lake from different angles. But we had to move on. What was in store for us inside the hot and humid Palm House and The Princess of Wales Conservatory was more exciting. The Palm House “creates conditions similar to tropical rainforest and collects about a quarter of the palms that are threatened in the wild. They are the ‘living fossils’ of the tropics”. Besides palm trees there were big bamboos. I learned that bamboos belong to grass family and are giants in the family. They can grow as tall as 35 meters. Jade Vine is one of the most beautiful and elegant of all tropic vines and it is kin to the peas and beans that we devour every day. Among so many exotic plants and flowers Chihuly’s glassworks sometimes quietly faded into the backgrounds and other times strikingly stood out. We were even confused by what was real and what was fake. In The Princess of Wales Conservatory we experienced ten different climatic zones all computer-controlled under one roof, from Wet Tropics Zone to Seasonally Dry Zone. We saw the giant Amazonian water lily and yellow, purple and red desert flowers.
It was hard to tear ourselves away from all these exotic plants and flowers but the humidity inside was too much to bear. When Jian had taken enough pictures we made our way to the Pagoda along Pagoda Vista. This Chinese Pagoda was built in the 18th century. The ten-storey and 163 ft high octagonal structure was, at that time, the most accurate reconstruction of a Chinese building in Europe. It is said the roof was originally covered with iron plates with a dragon on each edge, each dragon being covered in colored glass. There were 80 dragons in all. But its glory faded with iron plates replaced by slate and dragons vanished, allegedly sold to pay off some of King George IV's debts. Legend also has it, as mentioned in Zhu Ziqing (朱自清)’s “公园” when he described fondly of London parks and gardens in his travelogue, that there was a Confucius temple on the roof of Kew Gardens Pagoda (邱园宝塔). He did not see the temple at that time nor were we seeing any dragons now. The pagoda lacked its former glamour but still stood there, elegant and lofty.
After Pagoda, we came upon a pond. Exhausted from heat and long walk we took refuge under the trees by the pond. No sooner had we sit down our attention was drawn to several peacocks coming over, begging for food. They were very aggressive creatures. Tired of being fed piece by piece they just grabbed bread crumbs with the long beaks from Chang’s fingertips. She was really stunned by a bold female peacock when she bit on her fingers.
By the water edge two girls were sitting, their bodies leaned towards each other and their heads were bent over, quite absorbed in something interesting. The sunrays filtered through the leaves and cast shadows on their backs and over the pond. Ripples were expanding into clusters of water lilies. It was so tranquilizing that it reminded me of an impressionist painting. Virginia Woolf once turned her exquisite eyes towards Kew Gardens and wrote a short piece, in which she depicted several couples taking strolls among the flower beds. They were so much enshrouded with the surroundings, while the summer roses stirred by gentle breeze generating different colors, red, blue and yellow like tiny lights dancing on “the vase green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves”. As if under a magic spell they lost themselves in their thoughts, memories and dreams. They just melted into the air, the trees, the grass and the flower beds.
We tried to lose ourselve for a while but had to gather ourselves up and made our way back when dusk began to descend.
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