1 May 2019
13 facts to tell your kids about the Children’s Garden
From mounds of poo to creating enough food for a colony of bees, our new Children’s Garden is a great place to learn about nature.
Our brand-new Children’s Garden is a vibrant and fun space built especially for you and your children to enjoy.
From a Sun Garden to water play, your little ones will find out exactly what it takes to make plants grow.
Here are some fun facts to get them excited about this new adventure:
1. Poo-ey!
Over a third of the garden is planted with healthy mulch, which we make out of horse manure and other goodies to feed our plants.
2. What’s that you smell?
Sniff the difference between the sweetness of star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), the freshness of alpine mint bush (Prostanthera cuneata) and the potent perfume of pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana).
3. Fly through the air with our ground-level trampolines
Did you know that the maker of the trampoline showed off his invention by bouncing on it with a kangaroo?
4. Can you spot our largest plant?
The tulip tree, or Liriodendron tulipifera, is 10m tall weighing a whopping four tonnes.
5. Thousands of plants
We have planted 102 new trees for you to enjoy. That’s along with 18,500 plants, 500m of hedge and 6,000 bulbs.
7. Don’t be put off by the buzz
4,000m2 of the Garden is covered with enough flowering plants to feed an entire colony of bees, helping us to pollinate the plants
6. It's huge!
The Children’s Garden is 10,000m2. That’s about the size of 40 tennis courts.
8. Foodie plants
There are some familiar fruits in the Garden, like awesome apples, sweet strawberries, perfect passion fruits and purple myrtle berries.
9. Be kind to our oldest resident
The 200-year-old English oak tree Quercus robur is at the heart of the Garden, and you can walk around our tree on our 4m-high walkway.
10. Did you know that all the pathways are porous?
That means the rainwater can easily get through to the soil and roots to feed our plants.
11. A splash-ing time
You might get wet, but none of the water from the pumps is wasted. We use it to water the hedges.
12. Don’t forget to play in the bamboo
This super-strong grass is the fastest growing plant on Earth. In 24 hours, it can grow up to a metre and helps clean our air by releasing 30% more oxygen and absorbing more CO2 than other plants.
13.Things are going on underground, far from where your eyes can see
It’s thought that over a million earthworms are in every single acre of land; that means over 2.5 million might be in the Children’s Garden right now. They can eat their entire weight in food every day, lucky worms.
Advanced booking
You can now book online in advance for the Children’s Garden. This will allow you to select a 90-minute timeslot in advance of your visit (at no extra cost). Tickets will then be scanned either from paper or a mobile device upon entry to the Children’s Garden.
Each Monday we will release ticketed timeslots for the following week (a very small number of early-bird tickets will be available to book several months in advance). A limited number of timeslots will also be available at the gates.
Book your ticket to Kew Gardens
If you already have a ticket or you're a member, book your timeslot for the Children's Garden
