‘I was lifted, distracted and full of brave ideas at Kew’

Illustration by Clara Dupre

The problem with families is that they expect fun. When my children were small, I’d occasionally drag them to Kew for a change of pollution, on the slow train connecting my scruffy neighbourhood to southwest London’s elegant villas: essentially the Trans-Siberian Railway with accountants in too-tight England rugby tops. How my lucky infants must sigh for that lost idyll, those happy mornings on the compost-heap viewing platform, watching glossy-maned rats skipping about the steaming foothills, before slogging to either the Temple of Aeolus or the Bonsai nursery to consume their squashed hummus sandwiches. It was, at least, an education, if only in adult frailty. “Well then, waste money wisely,” said my daughter, aged seven or eight, sadly watching me scamper off to the gift-shop seed racks.

But my mother-in-law was staying: the best of women, cheerfully up for any activity. I don’t understand it. But she fancied seeing the flowers, so what could I do?

The train took years. I wasn’t looking forward to what little I remembered: elaborately deranged floral displays; the playground area, where hope goes to die; the tutting visitors queuing for copper puffin ornaments and floral leather gauntlets.

But Kew had changed; or I had. There was the monumental Palm House: white ironwork, swirling yellow and purple flower-beds, like an adult colouring-book designed by Aubrey Beardsley, lakes, urns, primulas. “England at its finest,” said my Irish girlfriend and, oddly, she was right. The views became ever more spectacular: a safari of tulips, frilled, splayed, the colour of peach melba and aubergine; Bird of Paradise flowers pecking tourists in the Temperate House; Judas trees in full fat-budded rose-pink glory; groves of succulents; rare plants from Georgia and the Pitcairns; persimmons, tamarinds, grapefruit.

Even the informational captions were better than I remembered, emphasising the vital work in conservation and biodiversity for which the world needs botanical gardens so desperately. Dozens of children must be inspired by the shots of cool botanists checking out fungi. As I examined a photograph of two young women gathering dwarf pines on Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain, I began to wonder if it was not quite too late for me.

Kew’s had its share of disasters. From crash-landing aeroplanes, a flagpole destroyed by woodpeckers and Suffragette arsonists torching the Tea Pavilion, to a bridge named after the Sacklers, whoops, it can’t be easy for this former bastion of plant-hunting Englishmen to feel encompassing, inclusive, relevant, yet somehow it does. Perhaps the secret is passion. Tiredly we drifted into the always-spectacular Shirley Sherwood Gallery, and the range of tree-based images – indigenous Australian pine nuts, Japanese oak seedlings, masterpieces by the Bedgebury Pinetum Florilegium Society, Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s stirring 30m video portrait of a Finnish fir, Vaakasuora – Horizontal, reminded us, even after all those trees outside, of the joy in noticing, the thrill of expertise.

And, although I felt too young and sophisticated for the gift-shop’s elastic-waisted Japanese Garden palazzo pants, searching instead for the specialist books about apple-grafting and rare edible perennials I thought I remembered, it turned out that retail therapy wasn’t the point. I was lifted, distracted, full of brave ideas. Who needs things, when the world is full of inspiration? Then, five minutes from the exit, I met a young man who sold me an annual membership, and lo! the cycle of life rolled on. I’ll be back soon to see the digital oak tree installation.

Charlotte Mendelson is a novelist. Her latest book, Wife, is now out in paperback. Her gardening column appears here every fortnight