Gin Garden @ Kew

What’s the perfect thing to do on a sunny Sunday in summer? What about drinking gin cocktails in the beauty of Kew Gardens?! Perfect!

The tropical greenhouse in the glorious weather

Tucked behind the lake with a good view of the tropical house is the Gin Garden van:

All decked out with panels detailing the botanicals and a herb garden on the roof!

The Gin Garden menu, unsurprisingly it’s all gin based, including a classic gin and tonic.

The idea of the Gin Garden is to play off the botantical link with Kew Gardens, this is tied together by the Spice Festival that is on this summer – where different plants that produce spices are highlighted around the gardens.

Some of the botanicals that you’ll find in Kew and in your gin!

No. 3 London Dry Gin is the partner – these bottles are actually full of botanicals steeping into the gin, ready for the cocktails.

Some more botanicals – not sure what they used these ones for….

Ta da, the cocktails!

We tried all the cocktails – from the top here is the Strawberry Dream, the Royal Rose and the Spice Route Chai-tini

The Strawberry Dream is dangerously good – sweet and fruity from the strawberry purée and with an added richness from the vanilla infused No. 3 Gin. You could drink this without realising the alcohol content!

The Gin Garden typically infuse the gin for a week before serving up – the vanilla uses whole pods in the gin bottle.

Yep going down well in the sun!

The cocktails are really rather pretty with their flowery garnish!

I found the Royal Rose sweetly fragrant like Turkish delight, the cardamom infused gin hits your taste buds first and then the Rose comes through. This is a light and refreshing drink – very flavourful despite using sparkling water as the main mixer.

The Spice Route Chai-tini was all the spices!! This used tea infused gin, as well as cinnamon, cloves and ginger. The tea was the main flavour – a little too strong for my taste (but I don’t drink tea!) – I think this is what lead to a bitterness also – from the tannin in the tea – a welcome contrast from the sweetness of the other two cocktails.

The full selection of the infused gin – cinnamon, tea, vanilla, cardamom

We played around with the infused gin – adding them to the cocktails, for example a little cardamom in the Strawberry Dream, vanilla to the Spice Route Chai-tini. I felt like I was experimenting, it was fun!

We also saw some more information on the use of different botanicals found at Kew in the bitters & other products:

They even have a bitters made from Jolokia – the hottest pepper in the world!

If you head to the Gin Garden – post a picture with the #no3andme hashtag to enter the competition.

My entry for the No.3 and me competition

Finally a classic gin and tonic with Jolokia bitters and a bay leaf garnish finishes the gin tasting session off! (Seeing as they only use a few small drops of the bitters it added flavour without a punch in the face of heat – very well balanced).

After our sampling was finished (I.e. The drinks were finished!) I took Laura on her first tour of Kew Gardens.

We started off in the Tropical House where there were several spices highlighted from tropical areas – both in Africa and South America.

Next up was the famous lilly pads – I still remember watching Blue Peter and seeing a girl sitting in one of the giant pads!

Then it was over to the rooftop walk…

It’s a long way up in the trees!

The view at the top.

It’s not fantastic if you have vertigo as you can see through the mesh on the walkway and it sways in the wind, but you can’t fault the views across Kew and the surrounding area from the top. This always makes me feel like a monkey or one of those documentaries where they live in the trees at the top of the rainforest canopy.

Our final stop (before an ice cream reward!) was the pagoda.

The landscaped gardens give great vistas across Kew.

Last summer you could pay extra to go to the top – but it doesn’t appear to be open at the moment.

Full disclosure: Laura and I were invited to Kew by the Gin Garden and received our entrance to Kew and cocktails for free. However I would have gone anyway! (Gin club made an outing last summer!)

The Spice festival and Gin Garden are at Kew until 6 September 12pm – 6.30pm.

You can find out more about the Gin Garden here and the Spice festival here.

Enjoy!