Temperance or Temperate?

It was Saturday; it was cold, but the sun shone brightly and nowhere more than at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The wife and I were on a pre-Christmas outing with friends who were sensible enough to insist that we had a look at Dale Chihuly's extraordinary glass sculptures. There must be more than a thousand of them and they pervade every corner of the gardens and greenhouses, bringing great swathes of colour and brilliance to complement rather than detract from extraordinary plants and stunning architecture. Although the Chihuly exhibits have been in place since May, there is a Christmas feel to them with cascades of colourful glass balloons in the Temperate House, and an extraordinary "Sun" in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I urge my readers to have a look before the exhibits are all removed in mid-January.


Chihuly is a prolific artist. Exhibitions of his glasswork fan out around the world from his home workshops in Seattle and Tacoma. Currently he is exhibiting at Kew and simultaneously (in similar vein) at the Fairchild Botanic Gardens, Coral Gables, Florida. There are further showings of his work right now in galleries in Toronto, Boca Raton, Bellevue, Orlando Florida, and Kalamazoo Michigan. His 2006 schedule includes more Botanic Gardens (in Missouri) and more galleries all over the USA. He is piratical in appearance (he lost an eye in a road accident when driving in the UK to visit the artist Peter Blake) and wears a black eyepatch.

But back in Kew it is not only the plants and glass sculpture that evoke Christmas. A temporary ice rink is in place and, viewed from the gallery of the Temperate House you catch a glimpse of Lowry-esque matchstick figures on skates.


And, particularly memorable, is the Thames skiff overflowing with a profusion of coloured glass, yet almost concealed from view in a quiet corner of the Palm House pond.


The only difficulty in an otherwise perfect day was that the Ranting Nappa had appointed himself "Nominated Driver" for the journey back to the distant South. Dinner isn't quite the same on a Saturday night when is behaving oneself from a temperance point-of-view. Still, next time I'll pilot a Thames skiff instead of driving a car!