The glasshouses at Kew Gardens are so popular that they can be quite unbearably busy at weekends. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re beautiful structures and the plants they shelter are so marvellous that they deserve the attention they get, whether from botany nerds, schoolchildren, or millennials dressed for Instagram and posing for selfies in the steamy leafy heat. But for the past five years, the biggest member of the Kew family has been closed to the public. Hidden under an enormous awning that the botanic gardens boasts could have covered three Boeing 747s (one of those area-the-size-of-Wales facts that mean very little), the Temperate House has been undergoing a lengthy restoration.
This isn’t just the largest glasshouse at Kew, it’s also the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world. More pointless facts abound, such as the number of panes of glass (15,000) that needed replacing, urns that needed removing and restoring (116) and litres of paint used (5,280).
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