Yesterday, we spent the day visiting Kew Gardens!
We were making the long journey over towards Richmond to explore the beautiful Kew Gardens and take part in a workshop called Rainforests: People and Plants. Although we were prepared for a long journey, we weren’t quite ready for a 15 minute wait for our train once we got to Hammersmith. That aside, we were excited for our day to properly begin.
We arrived at the gardens and immediately split into our two groups. Throughout the day, we would take it in turns to walk around the grounds and explore the glass houses, as well as brave the tree-top walk and to meet Jane for our brilliant workshop. During our own adventures, we went to the Temperate House. Lots of us took time to consider the different plants that we saw around us, and considerately and carefully sketched the beautiful leaves and flowers. We were very brave and went to the upper viewing platform too! Miss Forster Adams also told us that there was a huge lemon hidden somewhere so we took it as our mission to find it along our journey. We finally found it! It turns out that the lemon was a hybrid of a lemon and a grapefruit, hence the size. See if you can spot the lemon in our pictures! Some of us may have been slightly underwhelmed as it wasn’t as large as we thought it might have been…
Lemon aside, we also walked around the tree-top walkway. Lots of us were incredibly brave, despite being a little bit scared of heights. Up there, we spotted a few parakeets and also saw the size of the world’s largest pinecone!
The main event of the day was our workshop with the brilliant and knowledgeable Jane. We started by considering what rainforests were like in terms of their climate. We also thought about where in the world the rainforests are located in terms of the equator, the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. We also spoke about the resources that we can benefit from, that come directly from the rainforest, and also how this can impact climate change. Later, we moved into the Palm House. Jane was explaining that there are lots of different factors when considering the scientific, geographic and economic importance of the rainforest. She discussed a range of different scenarios and we had to consider which people would be involved with this. We learned about the plantain plant and the disease which is spread amongst Cavendish bananas. Apparently, there are Kew Scientists that are working to try to find a solution to this!
During our workshop, we walked around the Palm House and discovered how waterproof the leaves were, and we also noticed the way in which the drip-tip works. Ahead of our learning in geography, we also learned the different layers of the rainforest and considered why some leaves have a red underside (usually in the understory). We also learned about a stinky/cheese/foot plant (we can’t remember the name!). After we’d been through the Palm House, we went back to the learning centre and looked at a range of products that have been made from resources from the rainforest and we also tried, smelt and touched a range of different food products that we can get.
We had a brilliant day at Kew Gardens and would like to say a huge thank you to the parents that came with us, and to the SVPA for funding this trip!
