Taking tea at Kew Gardens

Taking tea at Kew Plaza cafe

pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
all images copyright Katherine Tyrrell

A lot of my plein air sketches at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew seem to be of people having a cup of tea. Maybe because that's often the only time I sit down and can sketch. Otherwise, because it's a very big garden (over 300 acres), it's sometimes feels a bit like a route march while I scurry around trying to see what has changed!

all photographs copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This sketch was done during my week's break on a day when I spent a good six hours at Kew - and still didn't get to see and do all I had planned! This sketch was done towards the end of the day as I debated what to do with the last hour before the gardens closed at 6.30pm.

This week the new Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway opens. I had some photos of the construction of this in Sketching the Japanese Landscape at Kew Gardens. From next Saturday people will be able to walk along the 18 metre tall, 200 metre long Walkway to see trees and their inhabitants up close and personal!

Also - you can see more of the garden in this video of a new piece of sculpture inspired by plants by LoopH. The video is at www.artisancam.org.uk, a free online arts resource for children and schools.

I think we're going to be seeing more and more sculpture in the garden since the amazing success of the Henry Moore exhibition at Kew.

(PS Apologies to those who got an odd version of this as an e-mail - I hit the publish button by mistake just as I was getting the last photos uploaded. If you refresh the page you'll see as it should have looked!)

Links:

• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Artisancam - The story of Kew Gardens latest sculpture
• Henry Moore exhibition at Kew
• Travels with a sketchbook in......London