“This is no ordinary stroll around some shrubs. These aren’t your bog-standard gardens“

Kew Gardens are also known as the Royal Botanic Gardens. Just 30 minutes from Central London, Kew Gardens boasts landscapes, glasshouses, historic buildings and a vast range of rare and beautiful plants. Its scientific and botanical centre has been and still is of huge importance worldwide. In 2003, Kew Gardens became a United Nations World Heritage Site.

Open all year round, the Gardens cover over 300 acres, on the south bank of the River Thames, between Richmond and Kew . They were originally home to two estates – Kew Estate and Richmond Estate – which were combined to form the Royal Botanic Gardens.

The formal gardens are, of course, a major attraction, each specially planted and themed. They include the Azalea Garden, the walled Duke’s Garden, the grandly-named Palm House Partierre, the Queen’s Garden, the Rock Garden, plus the Plant Family Beds and Rose Pergola.

Aside from the gardens, there are many other attractions to enjoy. In particular, make sure to look out for the Henry Moore Sculpture, the Japanese Gateway, the Pagoda (this 50 metre high octagonal structure dates back to 1762), of course Kew Palace and the Royal Kitchens.

And if you’re after more than a jaunt around the gardens, Kew also hosts a number of special events, throughout the year. Naturally, there are events focusing on plants and flowers, but if an open-air concert and picnic is more your scene, it’s worth checking out Kew The Music. And if you prefer movies to music, keep an eye out for Kew The Movies, which sees Kew Gardens turn into an outdoor cinema for one weekend.

Christmas has come to an end. For many of us, all that’s left of the yuletide period is an expanded waistline, a plethora of cards and paper wrapping, old electricals made obsolete by the latest gadgets received as presents, and a slowly wilting tree. All four need to be disposed of, but how?

For the first, the advice of Michael Pollan is perhaps most apt, Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Out with the chocolate biscuits and brandy butter, and in with carrot sticks and hummus. Dry January is another option, switching from lager to diet coke and from wine to a glass of sparkling water with a slice of lime. A new exercise programme can also help; whether that be small things like taking the stairs instead of the lift, or bigger commitments such as a new gym membership (although most gym members lose more pounds sterling than pounds of weight!).

Christmas cards can mostly be recycled, unless they have glitter or foil decorations, in which case they need to go into general waste – the glitter can’t be recycled and can clog the machines used in the recycling process. Most wrapping can be recycled, but bows and any other embellishment should be removed to make sure they aren’t removed by sorters (as we learned on a recent visit to Veolia’s recycling centre).

Electronics can be recycled in a number of ways. A Google search will show a number of companies that will buy old electronics kit. If tech is too broken or too old for them, the local council should offer a recycling option – electronics waste should not be thrown into general waste.

And lastly, what to do with the grand old Christmas tree? If it’s synthetic, put it back in its box ready to be used next year. If it’s live, firstly remove all decorations to avoid the risk of ‘cut by bauble’ injuries occurring or decorations contaminating recycling streams. Many local councils offer tree recycling services, and information about this will be on their website. Or if the tree is still hale and hearty and has its roots, try planting it in the garden to see if it will grow. Or, for a ‘biblically inspired’ approach, try and use the carpentry skills of Jesus’ father, Joseph, to repurpose the tree as a bird box or a hedgehog hotel.

Happy New Year and happy recycling. If you think you might be a bit of a recycling wizard, come along in early February to play the Sustainability team’s recycling game in Sustainability Week.

As Christmas approaches, swiftly followed by the New Year, we are always encouraged to take a moment or two to reflect on events of the year to date, our 2016. At the same time, as the period becomes increasingly commercialised, it is worth pondering for a moment what positive impact we can have on others. So this blog will highlight the top 5 stories about King’s making a better campus and a better world, and with any luck inspire in us all some hope for 2017.

In fifth place is the change to a smoke free campus. It is great to see the university aligning its actions with its research, and the smoke free campus is a fine example of that. The health impacts of passive smoking are well known, so freeing non-smokers from those impacts while on campus is a very positive step in the right direction.

In fourth place is the Entrepreneurship Institute’s launch of the business accelerator, with 20 start-up companies provided with a host of support to grow their businesses. Changing business is crucial to changing the world, and with many large companies doing more ‘green-washing’ than real sustainability and ethical practice, disruptive and innovative ethical start-ups are vital to changing business-as-usual to business-for-good.

In third place is research that has reduced the need for fish in experiments. In a new study led by King’s College London, researchers have validated a pioneering technique to recreate a freshwater gill system in the lab. This technique, published in the journal Nature Protocols, provides a more humane way to study the impacts of environmental hazards on freshwater fish, whilst reducing the number needed for experiments.

In second place is King’s commitment to a new ethical investment policy, not only moving money in the university’s endowment investment out of the most polluting and risky assets of coal and tar sands, but also committing positively to invest at least 15% of King’s endowment in ethical and low carbon companies.

Pictures courtesy of The Pole Pole Foundation.

And in first place is one of the most recent events, the presentation of the Prince William Lifetime Award for Conservation to John Kahekwa, long-term partner on conservation research projects within the War Studies Department. John reminds us all what can be achieved with faith and perseverance, even in the face of extreme adversity. John setup the Pole Pole Foundation (Pole Pole means ‘slowly’ in Swahili) to work with communities to protect gorillas in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In spite of a war that engulfed the country and claimed the lives of 5 million people, John stuck to his work and helped keep the gorillas safe and aided communities to recover from the conflict.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories above and that they may have warmed you up inside a little as the Christmas chill sets in. Here’s to the 2016 that has gone and the hope of an even better 2017 where we may all unite to move people and planet towards a better future.