London’s Kew(t) Gardens in Bloom

What with all the excitement of the beautiful sunny weather and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in the UK last week, I set aside a bit of time over the bank holiday weekend to finish editing my photos from a shoot I did with Abby Davies and Tessa Holly earlier this season. If you’ve been following my Instagram feed over the past couple of months you may have seen a few of these (scattered in between various other cute floral things) as I’ve been absolutely LOVING THEM. I don’t often get to hang out with other photographer friends on shoots, so it was great to have these two with me and finally get to edit some new photos that I am actually in too! I’ve popped their credits underneath the photos if you’d like to check out more of their work. Now on to the photos!

PALM HOUSE

Our first stop upon arriving via Victoria Gate (book online and you won’t even have to KEW! hahaha good one Marie) and grabbing a spot of lunch was the Palm House. In hindsight, this was a terrible idea as it is very humid in there. Nevertheless, I finally got to walk on the beautiful white spiral staircases that I have seen in oh-so-many photos, which made me very happy. And I also got some kewt (I’m sorry, I’ll stop soon) photos of Tess, who did an incredible job of pretending to be functioning at a normal human temperature. She is a #topblogger. I loved the tropical vibes in there and the nice creamy lighting from the giant greenhouse windows – just remember that it might be wise to visit the palm house at the end of your visit rather than at the beginning.

CHERRY WALK

After we had fully appreciated the tropics of the Palm House, we came outside to a very-welcome spring breeze and made our way over to Cherry Walk to frolic beneath the blossom trees. It seemed that we had chosen to visit at the absolute optimum blossom time because there were BLOSSOMS EVERYWHERE. No but really, I’ve never seen so many low-hanging branches covered in beautiful pastel petals. I got very excited. I’ve also been developing the idea for this cinemagraph of a girl with a butterfly for a while now, so I took the opportunity to make it here as the location was perfect!

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Tessa Holly

Photographed by Abby Davies

MEDITERRANEAN GARDEN

We walked through the Mediterranean Garden on our way to the Japanese Landscape, where Abby spotted these stunning yellow flowers. The light was beginning to get glowier as we approached the early evening, so I was able to get these gorgeous backlit portraits using my favourite 85mm lens.

JAPANESE GATEWAY

I have yet to visit Japan during the cherry blossom season, but if this was anything to go by then I have no doubt it would be exquisite. There’s something about the somewhat hand-drawn quality of the architecture that is complimented so well by the soft and delicate blossom petals. It almost makes me want to write a poem. But I’ll stick to photos to save you from my haikus.

RUINED ARCH

It took us the rest of the afternoon to make it all the way down the path that goes through the Ruined Arch because there was an entire border filled with amazing camellias and rose bushes in many shades of pink, red and cream. WHAT AN ABSOLUTE DREAM.

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

Photographed by Abby Davies

BEHIND THE SCENES

The day was fully documented so I have a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes photos too – here are a couple of my favourites from Abby. Tessa has also uploaded a behind-the-scenes vlog of the whole shoot if you’re interested in following us around in video form for the day!

Photographed by Abby Davies

EVERYWHERE ELSE

Unfortunately we only had time to walk around half of the gardens (it took us three times as long as normal humans because we had to stop at every single floral location). Here’s a link to the Official Spring ’17 Map – you can see that there are lots of other places which were either closed for the winter (we visited at the end of March) or that we just didn’t have time to walk to before closing. I would love to go back one day in the summer to carry on exploring! We did manage to make time for a much-needed cold drink at the gorgeous Tap on the Line whilst we were waiting for our trains home – there was a really nice atmosphere and plenty of fairylights, so if you’re looking for a place to stop for a quick drink after your day in the gardens then I would highly recommend. I believe they also do food to fix that rumbly tummy 🙂

Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far, I hope you liked the photos as much as I enjoyed editing them! I’ve got a few more cool things to share in the next few weeks so be sure to keep an eye on the blog if you’d like to see more posts like this.

Love Marie x