It would have been very difficult to find a more glorious corner of England than Kew Gardens on Saturday. Under a perfect blue sky that banished all memories of the sodden start to the year, pilgrims were paying homage at the botanists’ equivalent of Valhalla.
They had returned to their gleaming cathedral to perform a very secular form of worship. After five years of renovations the Temperate House, home to more than 10,000 plants from the world’s “Goldilocks zones” where temperatures are not too hot or too cold, was open again.
The £41m project to return the 1863 triumph of Victorian engineering – the size of three jumbo jets – to its original design, but using modern materials, had already garnered lavish praise from the architecture critics at a private opening last week.
But, given that it has absorbed nearly £15m of lottery money, the more important question was what would the public make of Decimus Burton’s metal-and-glass paean to biodiversity after its comprehensive overhaul? The answer is politically important. For Kew wants the Temperate House to convey an urgent message: that plants are the foundation of all life on Earth, and they are in trouble. Its cathedral needs to wow if that message is to reach beyond the converted.
As the temperature outside what Kew is now billing as “the greatest glasshouse in the world” rose into the mid-20s Centigrade, the pilgrims were emphatic in their response.
Christine Bacani, 28, from Canada, saw the house as a refuge from modernity. “It’s so different from social media. You are right here. It’s green in Canada, too. But it’s a different kind. Standing here to be able to see the life around us, it’s cool.”
Steve Ketley, 65, was a little emotional as he examined a Chilean wine palm. Ketley worked at Kew for 40 years until he retired in January and helped grow many of the plants now on display in the house from seed.
“I have a soft spot for the Temperate House because the plants are more familiar to the hardy gardener,” he said. “People will recognise many of the plants here, unlike, say, tropical plants.”
Ketley was particularly taken with the thought that had gone into the planting, ensuring that all the species on display had room to grow for a century or more. “Plants are ruthless,” he said. “Anything vigorous will swamp its neighbours.”
Emma Ford and her husband, Grzegorz, from Barnes in south-west London, were taking their daughters Lili, three, and Amee, nine, to see the house. The couple met when Grzegorz came to fix her kitchen. “Today I was telling him to look at the garden and the lighting more closely. It’s time he fixed my garden,” she laughed. “The light and the sun are so special to us in London. To be able to be in a house which captures it enough for life is beautiful.”
Many visitors were flocking to take selfies with the star of the show, the Encephalartos woodii, a type of cycad that looks a bit like a palm, described as the loneliest plant in the world. Only male specimens – cloned from one found in the wild in 1895 – now exist, making the hunt to find a female one of botany’s great quests.
Boran Djokic, 51, originally from Serbia, was visiting with his daughter Mia, 13, and his mother, Sasha. “For us, the gardens are like relief and now this reopened glass house will be another addition,” he said. “I have been in London for 25 years and today when I walked in I saw it in a different way. I have always seen it underneath big canopies and lush green vegetation. Today they all look small, and this is how it must have been years ago when it was first opened. It was like walking into a whole new perspective.”
Helen Smith, 37, came with her partner, Chris. As the sun streamed through the house’s 15,000 panes of glass, Chris made shadow puppets with his hands and produced a bewildering array of tiny kaleidoscopes from a bracelet on his wrist. Viewed through them, the Temperate House was reduced to endless patterns in which people, plants and the building were all magically fused together. For Helen, the trinity of house, plants and people offered a connection to something half lost.
“I was four when my parents took me here first. It’s all coming back now. They are no more. So this visit is special.”
