Kew Gardens’ summer festival to feature ‘fruit salad boating lake’
by Drucilla James
Forget Willy Wonka‘s Chocolate Factory, Kew Garden’s Palm House Pond is to be transformed into a fruit-focused boating lake from tomorrow as part of Kew’s IncrEdibles summer festival.
Culinary artists Bompas & Parr are creating the installation – Tutti Frutti – with a floating island topped by a giant golden pineapple, and a Banana Grotto filled with a ‘banana cloud’ described as “a fruit-based weather system for the tongue”.
With 240,000to 500,000 fruit- bearing plant species across the globe and 70,000 to 80,000 of them thought to be edible, the installation will prompt you to ‘think again about the food on the end of your fork’ and introduce you to foods you may never have tried or even heard of before.
A Global Kitchen Garden and a Rose Garden Tea Party installation, where visitors can pull up a chair and learn about the edible plants growing out of the crockery at each setting, have also been created for the festival and there is an extensive programme of events.
Tutti Frutti runs from 25th May until 1st September .Tickets can be booked in advance at http://www.kew.org/visit-kew-gardens/tickets/index.htm