It had been a long time since I’d visited Kew Gardens and I had certainly never been to on if its ‘after dark’ events.

American artist Dale Chihuly created some beautiful glass sculptures influenced by flora and fauna which was a natural fit for the Royal Botanic Gardens in London.

This magical exhibition cleverly used colour, light and music to bring a magnificent artistic twist to the landscape while giving exclusive access to the gardens after hours.

I tried my best to capture these stunning installations, take a look…

I really love art with installations, sculpture and interactive style exhibitions being my favourite kind – so when my other half Henry surprised me with this trip for our anniversary I was over the moon!

That’s me taking an anti-blogger shot – many bloggers wear beautiful outfits and gracefully float down this staircase. Here I am, puffer jacket, headband and cheesy grin! 😂😂😂

Having never been to a night exhibition like this before, I had no idea what to expect.

But, this is not Kew’s first rodeo, oh no, this was a fine well oiled machine and we queued up for ten minutes before being let into, what I’ll call, a night time garden Narnia.

It was like someone reached into my imagination and pulled out some wild creations and brought them to life.

A night walk

The gardens had a path lit up with fairy lights and we strolled around the grounds and the glass houses admiring the artwork.

Some of the structures were unbelievable and I genuinely don’t know how they stayed up and were made of glass. They were so magnificent!

The different areas of the gardens were used really well and it was so unbelievably relaxing.

What I liked is that you could take your time and spend longer at the pieces you liked. I was also mid-recover for my burnt leg (long story!) and it took me a bit longer to get round so I definitely appreciated being able to go at my own pace.

Hanging art

While there was plenty of art outside, there was also lots of pieces to discover hanging inside the glass houses.

The centre piece of the exhibition was in the Temperate House, the world’s largest surviving Victorian glasshouse, and it was absolutely breathtaking.

It’s a nine metre long sculpture made up of blue, green and yellow glass flowers and it is suspended from the centre of the building.

It looked so different from various angles, and I even lay on the floor (like many others!) to snap the shot below.

There’s plenty of other installations too that were nestled in the shrubbery – it was so enchanting. It stood out but combined well with the plants, I can’t describe it really and hope these pictures do it justice.

One smaller building had a huge pond in it with big lily pad style plants and the art in here was beautiful, and you could walk all the way around it!

Art exhibition

Honestly, there was so much to discover! Along with the walk around the gardens there was a small indoor exhibition full of smaller pieces.

I took so many photos but here’s a couple so you get an idea of the sorts of pieces on display.

What an amazing experience, I’m so thankful to Henry for booking tickets, we had such a wonderful time.

Like I said a few paragraphs up, I really hope these pictures did it a little bit of justice, there aren’t enough words to convey how beautiful it was. I really hope to do more things like this in 2020, they are so much fun and I really enjoy them so why not do more!

I’ve not been to Kew Gardens in the day since I was a teenager, so I need to make the effort to go back and see it again as the evening was just such a treat, I’d love to have more time to walk about and see the plants in natural daylight.

One of the last pieces was this incredible fireball looking thing that made me think of greek mythology – this would be medusa for sure!

Have you ever been to an exhibition after dark at Kew? Let me know if you have in the comments section.

I really want to book tickets for the Christmas lights next year, especially as Chihuly was so incredible!

Kew still have its promo video up which gives a great look at the art, which is tricky to capture in the dark…