Just after Christmas, I visited the Illuminated Kew Gardens. This is their 'Christmas at Kew' event, which also contained a small Christmas market with a few shops for crafts and food. Before Christmas, it included a Santa for the children. A small trail throughout a part of the gardens was illuminated, and they had a couple of small talks and interactive displays for children. One included throwing small stones into a lake and hearing the noise projected. Another included hitting buttons to change the colour of the light projected onto a large tree.
Dusk at Kew
King Williams' Temple
The trails included various types of lights or lanterns or illuminated designs onto pavement. I enjoyed the paper lanterns, photographed below, because they were different colours.
Paper lanterns
Seeing the trees illuminated in different colours around the lake with their reflections in the water was pretty to see.
Illuminated trees and their reflections in Kew Gardens' lake
One of the interactive areas for children was listening to noise that seemed to come from this island of trees in the middle of the lake when stones were thrown into the water.
Reflections
Another interactive display was changing the colour of the light on three tall trees by pressing a button. When the colours matched on the trees, then something special would happen, but there were too many children pressing the buttons that we never did get to see what happened.
Illuminated trees
Further along the path, we came across a small fire garden where the lights were arranged in a spiral design.
Fire garden
One of the prettiest attractions was the illuminated (fake) lotus flower and the reflection of it inside a pool of water in one of the greenhouses. This was really beautiful and looked magical.
Lotus flower
Upon leaving the lotus flower greenhouse, we walked past the Victorian glass greenhouse to be treated to a small lgith display projected onto the greenhouse. Some of the lights were projected from inside, creating shadows of the tall plants. The light display was only short, so we stayed to watch it twice.
Lighthouse illuminated
While the trail was pretty, I was expecting it to be a little more Christmas-oriented with Christmas lights. There were not too many illuminations, and it was a slight disappointment. Despite trying to add a few things for children, I felt that they were a little bored and some seemed to be more interested in the planes flying overhead every three minutes. The Victorian lighthouse illuminated was nice to see, but I would have expected the light display to be continuous. The illuminated lotus was pretty, but the gardens were also very busy and this took away the magic.
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