If parks are a city’s lungs, then Kew is London’s soul. The Royal Botanic Gardens’ 300 acres of greenery and glass flourish quietly in London’s south-west corner, as if the city’s remorseless bustle here takes pause, handing over dominion to the forces of light and beauty.
Even when I visited in February, the cruellest month, as Britain hunkered down under the onslaught of the polar vortex, Kew was ravishing. A watery winter sun illuminated carpets of crocuses in purple and gold, while drifts of snowdrops and narcissi shivered under trees whose bare branches were like cracks in the sky. Close up, everything was coming into vibrant life, with buds on branches, bulbs thrusting up from frost-hardened...