Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Kew began as a royal pleasure ground in 1759 and grew into the world's most influential botanic garden - a 300-acre landscape inscribed by UNESCO in 2003 that pairs one of the planet's great living collections, around 50,000 plants, with world-leading botanical science in its herbaria and labs. The set pieces are magnificent: the curving 1848 Palm House, the definitive Victorian glasshouse with rainforest canopy walks inside; the Temperate House, the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world, restored and reopened in 2018 with 10,000 temperate-zone plants; the Princess of Wales Conservatory shifting through ten climates under one roof; and William Chambers' ten-storey Great Pagoda of 1762, a Georgian chinoiserie folly returned to full colour. The Treetop Walkway lifts you 18 metres into the canopy, bluebells and magnolias mark spring, autumn fires the arboretum, and the garden absorbs a full day without effort.

What you actually see

• The Palm House - rainforest under curving Victorian glass and iron.
• The Temperate House - the world's largest surviving Victorian glasshouse.
• The Great Pagoda - Chambers' 1762 folly above the treetops.
• The Treetop Walkway - the canopy circuit 18 metres up.

When to go

April and May bring bluebells, blossom and the gardens at their freshest; autumn colours the arboretum in October. Winter has the glasshouses' warmth and the after-dark Christmas light trail.

Honest expectations

Entry is genuinely pricey for a garden and the cafes match - picnics are allowed and wise. The site is huge; the land train helps tired legs but walking is the real experience. Heathrow's flight path passes overhead - the soundtrack is periodically jet-engined.

Nearby

Richmond's riverside and deer park upstream; central London half an hour away.