Kew Gardens Orchids Festival offers a much-needed blast of flamboyant colour to drab February days. Bringing the warmth of Africa to our shores this year, the Prince of Wales Conservatory is once again the host for this year’s floral extravaganza. Feeling in desperate need of some colour and warmth, I took a Friday off work to escape to another world.
When is the Kew Gardens Orchid Festival?
The festival runs every year from the 4 February until the 5 March and is held in the Prince of Wales Conservatory.
What is the Kew Gardens Orchid Festival
The festival features a different country each year and showcases their indigenous orchids. In 2023, it’s the West African nation of Cameroon: home to some of the world’s most fragile and threatened orchids. Surprisingly, this is the first year that an African nation has been featured but the exhibition team have gone all out on suitably themed animal sculptures.
What ticket do you buy for the festival?
A general admission ticket (£19.00) will allow entry to the orchid festival but you also need to select an admission time. While it’s an added level of administration, the timed entrances are designed to keep the queues down to twenty minutes maximum.
How long should you spend at the orchid festival?
There’s a timed entry to the orchid festival of thirty minutes. Queues to get into the festival can be twenty minutes or longer. I arrived on a Friday afternoon and walked straight in but did encounter congestion once inside. You can easily see all the orchids in half an hour. But bear in mind you’ll be walking at a very slow pace due to the number of visitors inside. As I’ve visited the Spice Festival at Kew Gardens before, the orchid festival was the main reason for my visit. If you plan to visit the rest of the gardens – allow another couple of hours for your trip.
What were the highlights of this year’s festival?
This year’s orchid festival focussed on one of the world’s most biodiverse countries on the African continent. Here lofty mountain ranges vie with rainforests, mangroves, deserts and grasslands offering 9000 plant species. 516 of these species are described as endemic – occurring nowhere else on the planet and are therefore vulnerable to changes in land use. In total, Cameroon boasts 450 orchid species – many of which originate from The Volcanic Line which runs inland from the coast.
Kew orchid festival review
Giant cacti tower over me as I join the slow procession into the Princess of Wales Conservatory. As we inch forward my eyes are drawn to the vibrant flashes of purple and crimson as the first exotic orchids flounce towards me. The arid desert plains soon give way to steamy jungle life as the humidity increases dramatically. But it’s a welcome change from the freezing temperatures outside. I can feel my addled muscles relax as I luxuriate in the warmth. Collective gasps are uttered up ahead as the lion statue swings into view. The centrepiece of the jungle, his impressive mane is composed of the most intricately entwined flowers to mesmerising effect.
The animal sculptures take pride of place
The lion is joined by many other friends including leopards, monkeys and giraffes but somehow they pale into the background when compared to the fauna. And the orchids are everywhere – suspended from the ceiling, perched between rocks and woven into trellis walkways. I can only imagine how long the display took to create. With so much to see, I’m thankful for the slow pace giving me time to linger and snap those endless Instagram moments.
The warmth and colour on display is such a relief from the cold, grey February day outside. And it’s one of the cheapest ways to experience another continent without leaving the comfort of your own backyard. I particularly liked the photos of Cameroon which are interspersed throughout the exhibition revealing insights into this relatively unknown destination. From lush rain forests and lofty mountain ranges to the intimacy of people’s front rooms.
My thirty minutes in the conservatory fly by and I know that I’ve seen far more orchids in the last half hour than I would ever see on a holiday to West Africa. The Kew Gardens orchid festival really does offer escapism on an epic scale and I can’t think of a better way to relieve the winter gloom.