There are wildly coloured, alien-looking spheres in the brushed gravel of Kew’s Japanese garden while in the Victorian temperate house a 10-metre abstract glass sculpture hangs from the ceiling.
Elsewhere, yellow glass spikes poke upwards among the brunfelsia australis, (yesterday, today and tomorrow trees), while red reed-like structures rise up among fuschias and salvia.
The glass artworks are all by the American artist Dale Chihuly and his studio, part of a six-month exhibition of his work at Kew Gardens which opens on Saturday.
Chihuly was last at Kew Gardens in 2005, in what was one of the most popular events in the organisation’s history.
Richard Deverell, Kew’s director, said the last Chihuly show was “a really important turning point for Kew in terms of being seen as a destination for world class art”.
One aim had been to draw in people who would not have thought of visiting a botanic garden. “It worked,” he said. “More than 900,000 people visited, we had to extend it due to popular demand. At the time it was the most popular exhibition that Kew had ever mounted and back then I always felt we would see Dale’s work return to Kew.”
In total, 32 artworks have been installed in 13 locations across Kew’s glasshouses, galleries and open spaces.
They were sent from Seattle in 11 shipping containers in January, arriving in the UK in March. A 400 sq metre marquee was erected in the gardens to take in the boxes of glass, which were then installed across the site, a process which took 18 days.
It was a really big job for Kew and the Chihuly team, said Kew’s project manager Nick Thompson. The most complex artwork, Icicle Tower, has 1,882 separate elements.
Chihuly said he was honoured to once more bring works to Kew “with its magnificent landscape and extraordinary glasshouses, structures which have always captivated me. How do you describe a beautiful building like the Palm House or the Temperate House?”
Chihuly: Reflections on nature, takes place at Kew Gardens 13 April to 27 October.