Visit London Blog - Enjoy the very best of London
Looking for a tropical paradise in London? Head to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and wander around the Palm House where ThePhotoSchool photographed these lush leafy palms against the ornamental Victorian spiral stairs.
If you’ve taken some great photos of London, don’t forget to add them to the Visit London Flickr group.
Nootashey shared this lovely picture of spring crocuses, showing spring has arrived at The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.
Over the next few months you’ll be able to see crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells at Kew. Find out when to visit with Kew’s spring bulb watch.
We have some top tips for enjoying spring in London. If you’ve seen signs of spring in London, take a picture and share it with the Visit London Flickr group.
Just in case you’d forgotten (or haven’t noticed the array of pink and red in every card shop in London), it’s Valentine’s Day on Monday. Whether you’re celebrating, commiserating or really couldn’t care less, here’s our pick of activities for this weekend and the big day on Monday:
Romancing
The best of the rest
Visit some of London’s finest fabric shops and you’ll soon find the perfect material to make beautiful quilts, clothes and presents!
Liberty
For the ultimate fabric shopping experience, head to Liberty and swoon over the lovely Liberty print cotton in this stunning department store. Look out for the special collection of fabric created for the V&A Quilts exhibition which is sold by the metre, as well as in smaller pieces just for patchworking which are charmingly known as fat quarters!
The Cloth Shop
The Cloth Shop is a Notting Hill fabric boutique and a rabbit warren of beautiful cloth. Check out the back room which is full of yummy designer remnants and Savile Row leftovers.
The Cloth House
The area round Berwick Street is home to lots of fabric shops, including the two shops which make up The Cloth House. One shop offers basics like cottons, suiting and ticking, the other sells luxuries – velvets, jersey and embellished fabric. You’ll also love nearby Boroviks, The Berwick Street Cloth Shop and Soho Silks which are great if you’re making something for a special occasion.
Creative Quilting
If you’re off to see the tapestries at Hampton Court Palace and the textiles at The Royal School of Needlework, you’re just round the corner from Creative Quilting who stock over 1,000 different quilting fabrics, including festive fabrics for special occasions.
Tikki Patchwork
Tikki Patchwork is stuffed with colourful fabric that’s perfect for patchworking and making pretty gifts. Tikki Patchwork is close to Kew Gardens and they’ve clearly been inspired by the exotic flowers and the beauty of nature when choosing their lovely cotton prints.
M Rosenberg & Son
OK, this isn’t a shop, but once a month, M Rosenberg & Son take over Hays Village Hall in Bromley and fill it with huge rolls of lovely fabric. As well as the basics, you’ll find astonishing bold Italian print cottons and other unusual stuff that isn’t on their website. A family business, M Rosenberg & Son have been selling fabric since 1946 and it’s now the son and grandson! www.mrosenbergandson.com
MacCulloch & Wallis
The ultimate haberdashery, MacCulloch & Wallis have three floors stocking everything you need to whip up the perfect couture outfit – the thread, fabric, zips and trim. You can even pick up a hat block and sinamay in every colour of the rainbow to make a matching hat.
Goldhawk Road
There’s loads of fabric shops in Goldhawk Road which sell all sorts of fabric from all over the world. One of our favourites is Classic Textiles which offers good quality silk, crepe de chine and suiting. A-One Fabric and the stalls in Shepherd’s Bush Market also stock a good range.
Cath Kidston
Did you know you can buy Cath Kidston fabric by the metre so you can make anything you like? We love the London street scene cotton fabric and the oil cloth in pretty spots and florals.
Joel & Son Fabrics
Joel & Son have an enormous shop near Edgware Road and have been selling everything from printed cottons to embroidered chiffon for over 30 years. If you can’t find it here, you’ll have to weave it yourself!
Did we miss out your favourite places to buy fabric in London?
Calling all boffins! National Science and Engineering Week starts tomorrow. The week includes all sorts of cool science events for adults, children, students, engineers and scientists in London.
Here are a few of our top picks:
1. Striking Your Own Chord: Journeys into Musical Plagiarism
Why do people plagiarise music? George Harrison was once found guilty of “unconscious plagiarism” in a law suit which cost him a million dollars. In this free lecture for adults, neuroscientists and musicologists explain why plagiarism is pretty likely to happen and give you the chance to try out karaoke pods to find out how unique your music writing skills are.
7-9pm, 17 March at the Science Museum. Free
2. Subterranean Tours
Paying £5 to crawl down an abandoned tunnel might not be your idea of fun, but it will be worth it when you get to the other end and find yourself in the former Grand Entrance Hall of the Brunel Museum. This subterranean amphitheatre has been inaccessible for 140 years and is now open for you to explore.
Afternoons 13-21 March, don’t wear your favourite trousers.
3. Behind the Scenes Tour – Kew’s Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives
This is a real treat – take a sneaky peak at the secrets of The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew! Kew have collected 7 million herbarium specimens and 200,000 artworks during their 250 years and the collections are usually only available to view by horticulturalists and historians. Tours are free but you need to book in advance.
16 March www.kew.org
4. Geek C’est Chic: Fashion in Science and Science in Fashion
Forget leggings, jeggings and treggings, the hottest garment you could possibly be seen in during National Science and Engineering Week is your lab coat. At Geek C’est Chic, London fashion designers will be redesigning the lab coat for the modern scientist. This simple protective garment will be transformed, not just in fashion terms, but using the latest nanotechnology and “smart” materials.
7.30pm on the 19 March at the Bethnal Green Men’s Working Club. Free.
5. Geek Pop presents … The Science Sessions
One of the best nerdy parties in London, the Geek Pop science night promises science songs from Helen Arney, Spirit of Play singing about quantum physics, and rock god Dr Stu and the Neutron Stars.
7.30pm on 18 March at The Miller. Tickets just £2 from www.geekpop.co.uk
National Science and Engineering Week runs from 12 to 21 March 2010. Find out more information about the events mentioned and check out everything else going on in London at www.britishscienceassociation.org
On Friday nights, the V&A offers inspiring talks featuring some of the biggest names in art, design and culture.
Last Friday’s talk celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. The theme was the inspiration of nature.
The speakers were designer Celia Birtwell, naturalist Richard Mabey, journalist Anna Pavord and David Mabberley, the keeper of Kew’s Herbarium. (When there are portraits of Michelangelo, Holbein and Inigo Jones watching from the walls of the lecture theatre, you need an impressive line up like this!)
Acclaimed designer Celia Birtwell was top of the bill. Celebrated for her hand-drawn floral print fabric, Celia revealed she created one of her famous prints while sketching at the V&A. Celia talked us through many of her famous designs, sharing the inspiration behind each piece.
(If you’re wishing you had a designer budget to buy Celia’s work, she’s recently designed a purse-friendly new cover for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights!)
Richard Mabey spoke about the devastation caused by the big storm of 1987. Kew lost many rare trees, but unexpectedly the damage wasn’t all bad, as it gave the scientists access to the roots and their underground world for the first time.
Anna Pavord described the wild landscapes of Kazakhstan, Scotland and Cumbria. Anna’s eloquent thoughts about nature provided an enjoyable take on the way the natural world can inspire the written word.
The Herbarium at Kew contains more than 7 million plant specimens and many paintings of plants. The drawings are stored by species so you’ll find all the cabbage paintings together. David Mabberley spoke about the illustration side of the collection and the way it inspires Kew’s conservation work.
Did you know that the illustration of plants dates back to antiquity? That repeatedly drawing a plant from previous drawings over centuries creates a sort of Chinese whispers effect of changing and simplifying the information? David also told the audience a story about a drawing of a mythical Barnacle Goose Tree from the 1500s which convinced a few people that geese grow on trees.
All that in just over an hour! You can book a ticket to a Friday night talk for £8 (£6 concessions) and it’s worth every penny. At the end, there’s usually a chance for you to ask questions and get books signed.
Find out what’s coming up at the V&A’s Friday Talks here. Your favourite designers might be up next!
I tend to think of Kew Gardens as a place best visited in spring when hundreds of daffodils and crocuses fill the lawns.
However, I was pleasantly surprised when I visited on a distinctly autumnal day – windy, a little on the cold side, and cloudy skies (though the sun did manage to break through a few times).
Although many of the flowers aren’t in bloom at this time of year, there’s still plenty of colour on the trees, as their leaves turn red, gold and orange. The ground was littered with acorns and it seemed the resident squirrels couldn’t believe their luck as they scampered about collecting them.
There was no shortage of wildlife as we saw several flocks of Canadian Geese wandering around the park, plus swans and their signets on the lake, and a few ducks too.
Up on the impressive Xstrasa Treetop Walkway, we came close to some pretty decent looking conkers – the kind that I could never quite reach as a child. In all honesty, I was still too short to get them, but a taller person might just manage!
The Pagoda at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Photo by Mr Wind-Up Bird from the Visit London flickr pool.
