Celebrating Colombia at London’s Annual Orchid Festival

Last year, I wrote about visiting Kew Gardens as a day trip from the city to relax and revel in the beauty of the orchid display.

Each year, Kew puts on an orchid festival. Returning for the 24th year, this year’s show was taken over by 1,100 species of orchids representative of Colombia.

Kew Gardens used to be the private playground of the royal family, but was transformed into a botanical garden in the 1840s. Now, Kew is home to over 30,000 plants spread across lawns, greenhouses and flower beds- it’s the largest and most diverse collection of living plants anywhere in the world.

This year’s orchid show reflect’s Colombia’s diverse landscape- from tropical beaches to snow-capped mountains.

In addition to revelling in the beauty of the show, I learned Colombia is home to 4,270 species of orchid- the most in the world.

Meandering the conservatory, I was amazed- colourful arches of flowers, a ‘carnival of animals’ made up of blossoms and a cascade of colourful hanging vandas meant to represent Colombia’s famous rainbow river, Caño Cristalesm.