Kew Gardens Reviews 

My partner and I were supposed to go to the Halloween at Kew exhibition/trail, and our session was supposed to last 1 hour 30 minutes until they closed at 10PM. Unfortunately, our taxi taking us there cancelled last minute, and the next one was badly delayed. As a result, we arrived late, but we still had an hour and 10 minutes left on our session that I paid for. There could have easily been a compromise where they let us in for the rest of our session, but no, we (along with several other couples) were turned away. While the junior staff member was actually very nice and apologetic, their manager who intervened was extremely rude: when I tried to explain our situation, they cut me off telling me to let them speak, and then proceeded to condescendingly lecture us about how we should have read their (well-hidden) terms and conditions and arrived earlier, blaming us, even if our delay was completely outside of our control and we still had over an hour left on the session that I paid for! Rather than being apologetic about it, the manager showed a complete lack of empathy and continued to arrogantly talk back to us, so the argument inevitably got heated. The manager began calling security to “remove us from the premises”, effectively threatening the use of force, even though we were never even on the premises in the first place (they never let us in), even if we always kept our distance and never touched or threatened them in any way, in fact, we were actually giving up and starting to walk away at that point. This manager was clearly an unpleasant individual that enjoyed having a tiny bit of power.

It is a shame, because my partner and I were regulars at Kew Gardens and have some good memories there, but this experience completely put us off from coming again. They need to train their staff properly and not have such cruel terms and conditions. Avoid this place at all costs because you will not get your money (or your time) back!

PS: if customer service actually cared about our feedback, they would be passing it on immediately, rather than giving me (and all the other negative reviewers) a ‘copy and paste’ answer and telling us to get in contact with them.

Attended the Halloween special with my young child. It was marketed as 'spooky fun for all', but it was far from it. Terrifying for my little one and a complete waste of money as we had to power through the trail in about 30 mins. Not to mention the trail suffered the usual bottleneck issues as the ones (pathways just aren't wide enough!) and food for horrendously over priced with little seating area to eat. Have complained, but was informed 'everyone else had fun', so it must be my little one who's the issue clearly. Disgusting attitude and just another money grab. Have unfortunately already booked tickets for Christmas, but believe me this will be the last visit.

I visited Kew Gardens in late August and enjoyed it. The tickets and food were a bit pricey, however my family had a great time and we liked the overall experience.

I had a 2for1 voucher from National Rail's Days Out Guide. However it wasn't quite 2 for 1, as I was charged the cost of a gate ticket despite buying online in advance.
Otherwise visit was good.

Love going to Kew Gardens. Always enjoy walking around the grounds and going to the Christmas lights in December.

We paid to attend the Horrible Science exhibition but weren't particularly impressed. We entered from the Ferry Lane car park. No signposting to the exhibit itself. Even with the map it was very confusing. We eventually found the hub, one of the displays was closed, there was not much to see apart from boards describing various fungi and plants. Wasn't particularly hands on for children. There were a few more "zones" related to the exhibit but just sound recordings detailing a few plants. Very disappointing to pay £22 per adult for this.

The rest of the gardens didn't feature much at all apart from the Temperate House but as someone above said, very few plants were labelled so we didn't know what we were looking at.

Avoid Kew Gardens unless you wish to attend the Christmas Lights evenings. That is worth it. But if you're here to see beautiful gardens you'll be sorely disappointed. Cliveden in Buckinghamshire is far, far better

I phone. Everyone’s busy, they’ll call back. They call back MUCH later, so we aren’t home. They leave a message when we ask callers not to. We are no further along.

We try online. After taking ALL our details AGAIN, (WHY? This is our second renewal) we choose to pay using PayPal, which plainly they would rather we didn’t, because they then make difficulties - we have to enable ‘pop ups’, whatever the hell that means.

We find out. It’s a long hot day and we are getting really irritated. We successfully enable pop ups, but Kew’s utterly useless website still keeps insisting we have to ‘enable pop ups’.
We have NEVER had to do this before in order to use PayPal.

At the point we give up and buy an English Heritage membership instead. Life is too short for this weird hassle - and English Heritage know what they are doing online, 2 minutes and it’s done.

We won’t be bothering with Kew. Perhaps 2 yrs was enough……..

……..but that’s 20 minutes we won’t get back. I wonder how many others have been chased away by this astonishing amateurism? This is basic stuff. Mess customers around and they remember. They go elsewhere.

Also, this habit of offering a supposed £10 off membership for £77 via direct debit or, alternatively, £87 by one-off card payment deeply questionable - this dishonest practice hopes you’ll forget to cancel whereupon they’ll ‘auto renew’ and you can be quite certain cancelling will be anything but straightforward. People are lazy. Sometimes they don’t mind, all in a good cause. More often they are very annoyed, but there’s little they can do. People die (you’d be astonished by how many dead people have current memberships to various different organisations despite having deceased years ago, all due to the horrors of auto renew).
When did charities become so slippery? And why is it assumed this sharp practice is acceptable, simply because they are charities?

i love kew gardens & as a member have visited a few times a week for years. But, the fast tracking queuing system for members just doesnt deliver, & i keep finding myself stuck behind non-members unable to get through. Lion Gate is absolutely terrible. please sort this out kew gardens as we members are your bread and butter.

We’ve had a great day at the garden, we enjoyed the surroundings, nature and the houses/gallery. It’s a great place to visit if you live in the city and a nice way to spend the day! The lovely man working at the gallery(sorry forgot his name) was so friendly, made us feel welcome. We didn’t stay at the cafe but it looked busy however the garden didn’t feel crowded at all for a Sunday , we enjoyed the little shop as well. Marc Quinn’s exhibition is amazing and a must see! Would definitely go again, only wish I lived closer to attend the classes there they do look fun.

I enjoyed the trees and the glasshouses, had not been for years. Kew Palace was also very interesting and free to enter.
The cafe is a complete rip off, one tea and a tuna sandwich £8.50 !!
I ignore the notices where they go on about'climate change', there is none! Most sensible folk know that now, it is one big con.
Some of the bedding was good, at least this summer the grass is still green!!

I visited last week for Kew The Music, it worked really well as a music venue, the sound was good and it seemed well organised.

Sadly the bad review is because I didn't get anything to eat or drink, all of the vendors that I asked only accepted cards, which I didn't have but I did have cash!

I stopped using businesses that don't accept cash a couple of years ago and sadly won't attend a similar event at Kew again.

So much was spent on the children's garden, but I'm not sure how many CHILDREN they actually consulted. Certainly, children under 5 will enjoy the water play but there are no swings, no roundabouts, very little for older kids to actually play on. I watched child after child get bored - this garden may look nice but it isn't designed for play, it's designed for what adults think parents want.

I love Kew Gardens but my experience of the Joe Wicks festival was appalling, and this has affected the way I perceive Kew Gardens overall. It was an incredibly poorly organised money grab, crowded and loud, with no rain cover despite having been forecast for some time. I felt embarrassed that I had suggested attending to my family members. All attendees deserve at least partial refunds.

Love the place, staff were great, all the locations open and I look forward to going again soon. The only issue I do have is with bunches of school kids, without a teacher, in uniform, running around dropping litter and screaming. There should be a code of conduct for schools to follow and / or school free days.

Kew Festival with Joe Wicks was terribly organised. Clearly they oversold tickets as we had to queue for 2 hrs to get some food. We spoke with few people around ,they had the same experience . Not even mentioning the rain and lack of enough tents. They should refund people. Such a pity as it sounded like a great idea badly executed

Kew Gardens is now under investigation by the race equality body,and our findings will go straight to the king of England,your patron,like most of your prestigious tourist attractions in the uk,it stinks of a supremacist elite,they all employ ethnic minorities to do the most meaningless jobs,but never at the higher end of the establishment,just to say oh we do meet the race equality threshold by employing ethnic minorities,well we will see about that mr kew

We recently visited Kew, and after an excessive wait in the heat with only 2 cashiers open (both training) we finally got in, once we had paid the entry + a forced charitable donation (its not a donation if you force payment from the people)....
After a bit of time we decided to go to what looked like a nice alfresco restaurant "The pavilion" another excessive wait (35 mins) for service as only 1 out of the 3 food tills were operating (even though there were plenty of staff standing around with nothing to do and no direction.
My wife and I both had less than half of our tasteless meals from an extremely uninspiring and overpriced menu.
The mens toilet should have had a good mop out by one of those lazy staff members doing nothing more than chatting away, (it rivalled a dive bar circa 1990 at 4am with the stench and volume of urine on the floor).
The wine for sale was £55/bottle, the same wine was £16 at the gift shop and I know for a fact it costs less than £2 at the winery...
Come on Kew, the management should be ashamed of your pathetic level of service, quality and price gouging will just diminish the visitor numbers and before we know it, it will be just another "has been" place that needs to be bailed out by by the tax payer...
Even though the place is stunning, we will never return, let alone bring the family to experience it.....
The customer's need to feel like they are getting well cared for by Kew from the entrance, to the exit and everything I between.
Currently we felt shafted by something that excessively priced and severely under delivers on service in all aspects...
In the current climate all businesses need to be affordable and at the same time overdeliver to remain viable or visitor numbers will quickly dwindle to a trickle.

I am writing on behalf of my Czech relatives Mr.and Mrs. Majer who visited Kew Gardens on the 28 April whilst on a visit to London. They arrived after 4 pm and were told that the entrance fee was £22.00 each as the half price offer wasn’t on offer until the following month. They duly paid the £44.00 by card and entered the gardens only to find the restaurant was closed along with other amenities. They were refused entry to other amenities by staff informing them that they were closed. They then returned to the entrance and asked for a refund which was initially denied but, after receiving help from a lady who made a telephone call on their behalf were were offered a refund on their card.
Today they have not yet received any refund nor a response to their complaint.
This attitude by Kew is completely unacceptable, how can you expect for

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Paul Sperrin
Plenty to see in such a vast area, lots of walking or take the little train & hop on & off where you like.
Really could do with a bit more seating around the gardens, plenty at the cafés, but more needed in other areas.
One big negative point on the day was the state of the toilets, especially the Pavillion cafe ones, Disgusting is the only word to describe them, my wife said all four toilets were blocked and unusable, I found the gents dirty and very smelly, I brought this to the attention of a manager and was told very bluntly there was nothing he could do, if he worked for me, he would be looking for another job.
Visited on
Weekend

Wait time
No wait

Reservation recommended
No

Kew Gardens may be very pleasing on the eye but it is a real rip off where prices are concerned. The sign posts are almost non existent, making it difficult to navigate. The car park was hell with hardly a marshal in site, it was a free for all. A cup of tea was £2.80, a thin slice off cake was £4.50 and a sausage roll or scotch egg was £7.00, that’s scandalous. Buying tickets online is very misleading, you need to scroll right to the bottom or it invites you to pay £43 each as opposed to £43 for 1 adult, 1 child and 1 concession, this is very misleading and opportunistic to say the least.