Rebecca Louise Law at Kew Gardens

In the last year or so, I have visited Kew Gardens three times – all thanks to my friend who is a member, hence I was able to get free entry because of her. So, when she enthusiastically informed me about the new botanical installation by London-based artist Rebecca Louise Law , it got me excited again.

We wanted to visit the gardens on a nice day (for a change), but with the unpredictable British weather, it wasn’t exactly an easy task. Although we did meet on a sunny Sat morning, the chill wind was strong and it didn’t help by the fact that we were both slightly under the weather.

Despite that, it was still a joy to walk through Rebecca‘s interactive installation ‘Life in Death’ featuring 1000 garlands of preserved flowers, inspired by the ancient Egyptian funeral garlands of Ramesses II at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. It is very difficult to capture the installation on camera, you’d have to walk through the room to fully appreciate the delicacy, intricate details and stunning arrangements hanging from the ceiling.

Since Rebecca hates waste, she tends to recycle and retain leftover flowers from her installations. This ‘life in death’ installation strives to create ‘life’ from no-longer-fresh-flowers and encourage visitors to appreciate age, nature and the beauty of preserved flowers.

The installation features 375,000 flowers cultivated from across the world, including her entire collection of preserved flowers from the past decade. All the flowers were treated by freezing in Kews’s giant freezer to kill off any potential pests before being turned into garlands. Each of the 1000 garlands took a day to make – luckily, the effort paid off.

After seeing the installation, we walked up to the Treetop Walkway to enjoy some autumn foliage. Even though it was rather chilly, it was still pleasant to see the gardens from above. I think the gardens are lovely all year round, but the mix of yellow, brown, green and red colour tones undoubtedly make autumn slightly more endearing than other seasons.