Ice House and Winter Garden

The Ice House

Records say that the Ice House was being used back in 1763. Ice was a great luxury, used in summer to cool drinks and keep food fresh. But with no mechanical means of making ice in summer, they had to wait for nature to do its work in winter (winters were colder then). When it was thick enough, blocks of winter ice were cut and collected from Kew's original lake. The ice took three days to 'harvest'. It was then packed into the Ice House with layers of straw and, thanks to the thick wooden inner door closing off the north-facing entrance tunnel, and with the whole brick-lined structure being covered with earth for insulation, the ice lasted long enough to be used throughout the summer.

Winter Garden

The Winter Garden is all around the Ice House and is laid out for real interest on grey days. Aesthetically, this is a very pleasing garden where both sight and scent come into play. Specimen shrubs are set off against an evergreen backdrop, perfect for those which flower on bare wood. Here, Mahonia x media 'Winter Sun', winter box and the chocolate-scented Azara microphylla surround wintersweets, viburnums, flowering quince, cornelian cherries, witch hazel and willows with their yellow catkins. There are bulbs, too, planted under the woody specimens, with winter aconite, snowdrops and windflowers left to naturalise. Keen conservationists will note the Abeliophyllum distichum which is endangered in its native Korea.

A Heritage tree

Nearby, a splendidly gnarled Japanese pagoda tree (Sophora japonica) is one of Kew's oldest trees, having been brought here in 1762. Even buttressed as it is with bricks and with sagging limbs supported by steel braces, it has tremendous dignity and great presence and always seems to have visitors gazing reverently at it.

A time capsule

The small hill between the Ice House and the Broad Walk is 'The Mound', notable not only for being an ancient feature of the Gardens, but also for having had a Time Capsule buried at its summit on 12 June 1994 on the occasion of World Environment Day. Professor David Bellamy revisited the site on the 10th anniversary, together with some of the children who had written messages and poems for the capsule a decade earlier.

Continue the tour

Back up to: Entrance Zone

Carry on to: Secluded Garden