Visiting Kew gardens - Princess of Wales Conservatory orchids

Not like your usual orchids found in the average lounge

If you read my previous Kew post last week you will know that I dragged the mother to Kew for the British Mothers Day.  We had a great time mooching about in the vast greenhouses there.  I love the Palm House for its old-world grandeur and architecture.  She's a simple but stylist beast.

The other greenhouse at Kew is a whole different ballgame.  Separated into different zones by doors, moving between them plays havoc with ones personal body temperature, an easily adjustable coat zip is key I feel - and don't coif before you go.  Regular sprays of water vapour in certain sections will see off any kind of managed style in seconds.  If my hair wasn't already a mass of curls, who knows what I would have looked like.

This super high tech approach provides the perfect growing environment for different types of plant, but one constant throughout most of the zones are orchids.  Now Im going to put this out there: I don't really like orchids.  I find them a bizarre concept.  Yes the flowers are pretty, but they don't change, once the individual flowers come out they can be blooming for like a month, completely unchanged.  It may sound odd, but to me, unless a flower is a transient thing you may as well have plastic ones.  Thats why my orchid is currently buried in the utility room with the washing powders.

But the orchids in Kew's greenhouse are something else.  This is where orchids look good, in their proper environment, even if it is enclosed in glass.  The orchids that appealed to me were the ones that have unusual colours and markings.  Weirdly this coffee coloured one particularly appealed, probably because I have never seen a brown one in anybody's living room.

I thought the colouring of this orchid was really unusual, not every day I
advocate brown flowers 

I also rather liked this one, which is very simple but reminded me of raspberry and custard.  I couldn't believe the colour of this one.  How can a plant possibly be this vivid a purple?  I haven't played with the colours or anything.

This yellow and pink orchid almost makes me hungry for pudding

It may look like I have upped the saturation level of this purple orchid
but it is actually this colour, crazy what nature can do

The other type of orchid that I like are the small ones with splodges.  They don't sound glamorous but they are very pretty, especially on mass like this.

This is a rather extravagant number - colour, frills, pattern, its got it all

Despite how pretty these clearly all are, I don't feel any desire to get one, or to rekindle the one in my laundry room.  They don't want to be isolated on the mantlepiece, in my opinion, they want to be amongst other green in hot and humid conditions.  Great to visit, but leave them there.

Orchids looking their best in an almost natural environment