A choc-a-block full programme at Kew this Easter

December 2010

Kew up for Easter 2011, with fun-filled family days, arts and crafts experiences and delicious chocolate on offer.

Join in the Easter Egg Hunt (Sunday 24 April 2011), and seek out Buzzie Bee, Wriggler, Snap, Trap and Venus, the friendly characters from Climbers and Creepers, who will be waiting around the Gardens for youngsters to pick up the tokens needed to collect a delicious Green & Black's Easter chocolate treat from the Easter Bunny.

Visit the Easter arts and crafts workshops and let the little ones get hands on creating Easter designs.

If creativity makes you hungry come get your hands sticky, as Peyton and Byrne, Kew’s new caterers, reveal the process of chocolate making and give you a chance to taste the goods. Afterwards drop into one of the ‘hands-on’ sessions in the Secluded Garden Glasshouse (Wednesdays and Sundays) for a closer look at the inner workings of the chocolate tree.

The biggest display of colour in the country…

Come and enjoy the stunning beauty of over five million bulbs blooming, flooding the open spaces of Kew Gardens with three months of flowering splendour. The swathes of crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, rhododendrons and azaleas are set to be a riot of colour.

On entering the Gardens at Victoria Gate (from mid February), visitors will be greeted with a sea of over two million blue, white, and mauve crocuses (Crocus vernus) stretching beyond the Temple of Bellona and towards King William's Temple. Take a stroll down the length of the Broad Walk bathed in the glorious sunny glow of daffodils, the perfect setting for a gentle amble on a sunny spring day (from March onwards). Visitors will also be able to enjoy the sight of Kew’s breathtaking trees as they awaken and burst with new life.

Later in the season thousands of deep blue, starry flowered Chionodoxa siehei carpet the lawns surrounding White Peaks. These delicate alpine plants are known as 'glory of the snow' in western Turkey as they emerge from the melting snow of the mountains. To really get the most from the gardens at this wonderful time of year, join one of Kew’s spring walks around the Gardens, hosted by our volunteer guides, and marvel at the beauty blooming in every corner.

For more information please contact the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Press Office on 020 8332 5607 or email pr@kew.org

Images are available to download from www.kew.org/press/images . Please contact the press office for the username and password.

Opening hours: 9.30am – 4.15pm (until February 5), 9.30 – 5.30 (until March 26). Weekends and bank holidays close an hour later.
Last entry to the Gardens, the glasshouses, galleries and the Xstrata Treetop Walkway is 30 minutes before closing.
Admission: Adults £13.90, Concessions £11.90, free for children under 17 (with an adult).
Visitor information: 020 8332 5655 or see our Visit pages.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class Herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction. Its landscaped 132 hectares and Kew's country estate, Wakehurst Place, attract nearly two million visitors every year. Kew was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2009. Wakehurst Place is home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, the largest wild plant seed bank in the world. Kew and its partners have collected and conserved seed from 10% of the world's wild flowering plant species (c.30, 000 species) and aim to conserve 25% by 2020.

Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership has already achieved so much, and its enormous potential for future conservation can only be fulfilled with the support of the public and other funders. Kew needs to raise significant funds both in the UK and overseas. Members of the public can support the work of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership by getting involved with the ‘Adopt a Seed, Save a Species' campaign. For £25 an individual can adopt a seed or for £1,000 anyone can save an entire species.www.kew.org/adoptaseed