Press Release

Experience the high-life at Kew Gardens with the Xstrata Treetop Walkway

Kew's summer festival celebrates trees 24 May 2008 – 28 September 2008

Kew's summer festival will take visitors on a thrilling, innovative and educational journey around the Gardens, from deep underground to the unseen, green world of the tree top canopy.

… Journey from the roots to the leaves

The pinnacle of this festival will be the new Rhizotron and 18 metre high Xstrata Treetop Walkway, which give visitors the opportunity to journey from the fascinating root system, learning about a tree's life underground, to the top of the tree canopy to explore biodiversity from above.

The pioneering structure of the Xstrata Treetop Walkway is an ingenious design based on a Fibonacci numerical sequence, often found in nature's growth patterns. Designed by Marks Barfield Architects, the architects of the London Eye, it has a low environmental impact in keeping with the overall underlying environmental message behind the festival.

Supported by the Hanson Environment Fund, Kew's Rhizotron (taken from the Greek rhiza, meaning root) will give visitors a unique opportunity to delve into the underground world of trees. The Rhizotron, entered through an apparent crack in the ground, will show visitors the lively natural world beneath the trees, explaining the vital relationships between the trees roots and the micro-organisms in the soil. Then, rising 18 metres into the air, the Xstrata Treetop Walkway will allow visitors to wander through the canopy of sweet chestnuts, limes and deciduous oaks to discover birds, insects, lichens and fungi that rely on these huge organisms. This 200 meter long walkway will not only be a thrilling, tranquil and intimate experience, but will also offer a unique birds-eye view of the vast 300 acres of Kew, as well as the London skyline including Wembley Stadium and the Swiss Re skyscraper – commonly known as the Gherkin.

Tony Kirkham, head of RBG Kew's arboretum and project manager for the Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway project said, “As a trained arborist I have had the privilege of being up in the tree canopy; experiencing trees at height and birds and other wildlife from a completely different perspective. It's fantastic that we are able to give visitors the same experience and we hope it will make them realise that trees do matter and we need to nurture them.”

Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment said: "The launch of Kew 's Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway is a great reminder on International Biodiversity Day of the need to conserve the world's trees and forests, which hold 80 per cent of all remaining land-based wildlife.

"This project is an excellent way of showing tree life up close - from the canopy down to the roots."

… Investigate the science

The fun and excitement of the learning experience doesn't stop there! Visitors will have the chance to explore various attractions around the Gardens to find out about how trees work and how they benefit the environment. There will be a display demonstrating the biodiversity found in a woodland habitat installed in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The exhibition will focus on the flora and fauna found in and on the woodland floor. Large forest trees will form the framework of the display which will include a woodland glade jam packed with bluebells and cowslips. The display will include many other native plants which provide food and shelter for thousands of other organisms and give an insight into the diversity of life supported by temperate woodland. See examples of how fauna use the woodland floor. The homes of foxes and badgers are shown, as are wasp and wood ant nests. The presence of humankind, vital to the management of woodland, is acknowledged by including coppicing and charcoal burning in the display.

…Take a closer look

The Nash Conservatory will be showing Canopy - an exhibition of powerful imagery developed from highly magnified electron micrographs, revealing high definition photographs of plant structures. Using the pollen, seeds and leaves from a variety of trees, most of them grown at Kew and Wakehurst Place, the rich diversity of the plant world is revealed at a microscopic level by artist Rob Kesseler.  This extraordinary body of work has been developed in collaboration with Kew scientists Madeleine Harley and Wolfgang Stuppy. Wolfgang Stuppy and Rob Kesseler have collaborated on the book Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible, published by Papadakis in September 2008. For more information visit http://www.papadakis.net/live/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_jph1_info&products_id=110

Visitors will be able to explore the inner-workings of trees by peering into an open section of a huge fallen oak tree that will be placed near the Victoria Plaza. There will be large sculptures of microscopic elements of the tree surrounding the oak so that visitors can get a more detailed look at root hair fibres and leaf pores.

… Tune into trees

Visitors to the Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway will also be able to ‘tune into trees' and experience designer Alex Metcalf's ‘Tree Listening Installation' until 28 September 2008. Super-sensitive microphones will be rigged up to two oak trees on route to the Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway. Visitors will be able to listen through headphones, hanging from the lower branches, to the popping sound of water being pulled up from the tree's roots to its leaves. They will also be able to hear the tree rumbling as it moves with the wind. The installation aims to encourage people to appreciate that trees are not static and that there is more to them than meets the eye.

Tree listening can also be used as a scientific tool, providing vital signs if a tree is under stress.

… Get an interactive, global perspective

The Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway website will bring people closer to trees both at Kew and in other countries. Besides exploring an interactive map of Kew's trees, website visitors will be able to read blogs by people working with trees around the world, play games, upload photographs of trees and share their experiences of trees. There will also be a mobile phone game for those visiting the walkway. www.kew.org/trees

.... Looking East

For a far-eastern perspective, visitors can see a display of Kew 's famous bonsai trees in the Bonsai House. The Bonsai Collection includes conifers, maples, a Japanese white pine, a rhododendron, a beech and an oak tree. The smallest is a Cotoneaster horizontalis, just 10cm high, and the tallest is a Chinese quince standing around 60cm high.

… Take a step back

The beauty of trees is celebrated in a special category of the Garden Photographer of the Year exhibition to be shown at Kew Gardens from 23rd May for the duration of the summer festival. The panel of eleven judges deliberated at length over the thousands of entries from all around the world to select the final one hundred or so images to create the show. As well as Trees, visitors will be able to see the very best photographs for Garden Views, My Garden, Plant Portraits, Life in the Garden and the U16s category, Young Garden Photographer of the Year. Entries are now being called for next year's show. Go to www.igpoty.com for more details.

The Trees That Made Britain, series two, returns to television screens on May 9, BBC Two, 7.30pm . Tony Kirkham, the head of the arboretum at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and his best tree-climber Jon Hammerton, are on a mission to discover if we still value the trees that have shaped the British landscape in the 21st century. Along the way they look at the new uses forests are now being put to, after cheap foreign imports rendered them virtually valueless as timber; discover how the loss of trees might be aggravating the effects of global warming and relearn some of the old skills of the forests. Tony and Jon set out to find solutions to some of the problems that are affecting how we view the Trees That Made Britain, and which could change our landscape – and our lives – irrevocably. And above all the pair will be encouraging everyone in the belief that trees matter, and that if we look after them, they will continue nurturing us for many centuries to come.

Ends

Notes for Editors

For further information please contact Catherine Owen, Bronwyn Friedlander or Anna Quenby in the Kew Gardens press office on 020 8332 5607 or email pr@kew.org. Images are available at http://www.kew.org/press/images/trees_festivalhtm, please contact the press office for the username and password. For images of The Trees That Made Britain, contact jenny.walford@bbc.co.uk or 029 2032 2373. 

From the 30th March 2008 to the 30th August 2008 Monday to Friday the Gardens will close at 6.30pm and 7.30pm on weekends. From the 31st August 2008 to the 25th October 2008 it will close at 6pm. Please note closing times are subject to change and that last entry to the Gardens is half an hour before the Gardens close. From the 1 April 08 until the 31 March 09 admission will be £13 for adults and £12 for concession and FREE to children under the age of 17. Further visitor information can be gained by visiting www.kew.org , calling 020 8332 5655 or emailing info@kew.org .

Funding

Xstrata plc is a global, diversified mining group listed on the London and Swiss stock exchanges. They were inspired by the concept of the Treetop Walkway, seeing it as an imaginative and relevant project.

Construction materials supplier Hanson, part of the Heidelberg Cement Group, set up The Hanson Environment Fund in 1997, using landfill tax credits accumulated by the company, to support environmental and community initiatives from not-for-profit organisations. More than £17.5 million was distributed before the fund closed to new applicants in 2006, supporting hundreds of worthwhile projects across the UK. As a lasting legacy, the fund's final £1 million has been awarded to the Rhizotron.

The remainder of the funding comes from Defra, who fund half of the annual costs of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, plus two un-named individuals.

The Fibonacci sequence

Discovered by Leonardo Fibonacci in the 12th century, it is a simple mathematical sequence that lies at the heart of the growth of many plant structures, such as the spiral form of a pine cone. Starting with 0 and 1, each new number is the sum of the two before it, thus: 2, 3, 5,8,13, and so on. The ratio provides a perfectly proportioned growth pattern. This sequence is used for the spacing of the connection points for the diagonals of the walkway trusses. The 12m long trusses are connected to circular nodes which are in turn supported by pylons. It provides a seemingly random, natural appearance that in fact comes from a clear underlying geometry.

The Architectural Brief for Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop walkway

To provide a unique visitor and learning experience by giving access to the normally inaccessible root zone and upper tree canopy, conveying complex interrelationships of the tree fauna, flora and fungi in a stimulating manner.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction and its 132 hectares of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2009. The site houses over 40 listed buildings and other structures including the Palm House, Temperate House, Orangery and Pagoda as well as two ancient monuments, Queen Charlotte's Cottage and Kew Palace. RBG, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world.

There are a wealth of collections held at Kew that offer an opportunity to explore some of the lesser known aspects of RBG Kew's rich history and heritage and its present day role. Members of the media interested in a behind-the-scenes look at RBG Kew should contact pr@kew.org.

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