The Christmas lights at Kew Gardens are magnificent this year. If you can go, please do, as they have surpassed themselves. Incorporating ideas from a wide variety of sources, with over three quarters of their lighting LED, and all sustainable products.
Attractions include Lili, an abstract series of towering, illuminated flowers by TILT, captivates visitors. ArtAV introduces Trapezoid, among the longest light tunnels at Kew, alongside a cascade of over 400 lights adorning Camellia Walk. The Hive, an evocative representation of a beehive with 1000 glowing LED lights and an entrancing score, makes its trail debut. Returning favourites include Pitaya’s Spark Ballet, a dance of 24 lanterns, and Candles, suspending a hundred flickering flames to enchant passageways. Admire the Christmas Cathedral and the reimagined Fire Garden, illuminating Kew's oldest Victorian glasshouse with 300 candles and mesmerizing LED displays. Each display punctuates a journey through the park, which is this year, not only dramatic and enchanting– as it usually is – but many times, extremely poignant. Music has been well chosen throughout to capture the fragility of nature, and messages in lights drawn bright about how we should save the bees, be respectful of nature and the planet. The trees are carefully lit, unlike some Christmas light trails I have followed where all semblance of nature is subsumed by luminescent pink and orange dancing mushrooms, Cinderella’s and for some odd reason, Big Bens, which have nothing to do with nature or Christmas for that matter.
The day I visited it was cool but not cold and not raining. When it is cold (skies clear) ones wants to jog round rather than stroll. When its raining (and therefore warmer) the lights are blurred. It was just right as I walked (it takes an hour even without children) and there are stops for food (the usual mulled wine, mince pies and for some reason waffles which now need to be covered in cheese et al. There are huge robins, stars perched in trees, portals of light, and a lake which becomes a sky of passing clouds, and then Northern Lights, and then flowing stream. It is mesmerizing and memorable. Father Christmas is in his home about a third of the way through, with his hut and heater, and the huge greenhouses are lit to resemble something out of Spirited Away, and Chinese palaces, while the final curtain call is the son et Lumiere over the lake, with its dancing fountains.
With all that is happening with climate change, and the gentle messages that pervade throughout this trail, I found myself quite tearful. We must not only sustain and be responsible with nature, but we must also regenerate, or else the lights will go out. For all of us.
Embrace the seasonal magic at Kew and Glow Wild with tickets available at www.kew.org.
