Kew Gardens in March: the Orchids Festival (and a Very Lucky Lizard)

Sitting down to write this blog post I've realised how terribly timed it is - here I am blogging about the annual Orchids Festival at Kew Gardens when this year's festival has literally just finished and you'll have to wait a whole year to see it for yourself. I am a bad, mean blogger and I apologise.

Hopefully enough of the sheer joy of the TROPICAL COLOUR EXPLOSION that is the Orchid Festival will seep out of these photos for you to enjoy in the meantime!

The annual festival runs from mid-February to mid-March in Kew's Princess of Wales Conservatory and is a wonderful burst of warmth and colour. I visited in 2015 (regular readers will know I'm sloooowly blogging about my year's membership of the gardens in 2015, which is one of the best things I think I've ever spent money on) and absolutely adored it.

 

The Conservatory is already a gorgeous space to explore, but the addition of the orchid-filled displays is the icing on the botanical cake.

I got a peek at the preparations for the festival when I visited the gardens in January, but I was entirely unprepared for the sheer volume and variety of the orchids that would be on display.

I don't even like orchids that much (I don't dislike them, don't get me wrong, they're just nowhere near being my fave flower or my top choice for a houseplant) but en masse like this they made my heart positively sing.

You can learn all about orchids and their habitats at the festival, of course. Kew is never short of opportunities to learn some fascinating plant facts. But I mostly just wandered about gazing at the displays, trying not to repeatedly say "wow" out loud or let my jaw drop open in front of passing strangers.

All that and I encountered one of the Conservatory's resident pest controllers - a very chilled out Chinese Water Dragon who wandered across one of the paths to everyone's great delight. I'm not sure if lizards care about orchids (I'm guessing probably not), but a massive glass house has got to be a pretty great space for a lizard to live!

More Kew adventures soon!

You'll find all my Kew posts here, and you can read about all of my travels in the UK here.

You might also enjoy reading about my visit to the Camellia Festival at Chiswick House & Gardens.