London, Day 2

Today we went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. The Director of the Herbarium, Library, Art, and Archives section is Dr. David Mabberly who was, for about four years, Director of the University of Washington Botanical Gardens where Larry volunteers. (When he's in Seattle!) Larry had contacted him before we left, and he graciously invited us to lunch and tour of his domain.

We met him at 12:30 and saw the amazing collection (where the 8 million plant specimens are housed ) in the Herbarium. They are in the process of updating everything from the 19th and 20th century storage to 21st century protocols. It was fascinating to walk through it all with him and get such a concise and clear history of everything. It is quite a complex, and a complicated process. They get 50,000 new specimens each year!

He took us to lunch at the local pub, and we had a lovely conversation about Seattle, England, and Sydney Australia where he is headed in August. He then took us into the gardens and introduced us to the Kew iris expert, Richard Wilford. He was a very nice man who took us all through the places where irises are planted and shared lots of information with Larry. Sadly, England had a very early Spring, so we are here in between bloom times for just about everything. Here's a picture of Richard Wilford and Larry in the rock gardens:He also took us into the greenhouses where we saw how they care for each specie bulb. They've also been part of a bulb conservation effort as part of the global effort to monitor bulb marketing. Here they are in the greenhouse:

We did a few more things in Kew and then headed back to Holland Park. It was a unique and informative day!