Behind the scenes at … Kew Gardens: See how orchids grow in women's tights and the plant scientists thought extinct

The Standard has taken a camera behind the scenes at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, where an orchid festival is underway, the biggest Victorian glasshouse in the world is being restored, and plants are being saved from extinction.

Inside the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the highlight of the orchid festival has to be fuchsia pink Jim.

“His ancestor would’ve come from the Himalayas, among other places, and Jim has been selected by breeders for his beautiful, large flowers, his colour and his scent,” explains botanical horticulturalist Hannah Button.

“It’s a bit like a kennel name for a dog but it’s got to be something snappy and memorable."

Round the corner, Hannah shows the Standard how the orchids are grown for the festival – including one very unusual technique.

“We grow our species orchids on concrete trees because if we were to put them on a live tree, the orchid might actually outlive the tree, and having problems with rare orchids falling off rotting wood is not something you want,” she explains.

“So we actually make the trees out of concrete and we then attach the orchids by putting nails into the concrete, wrapping moss around the orchids’ roots, and then stringing ladies’ tights between the nails in order to allow the roots to get a purchase.”

On the other side of the site is the “hidden gem of Kew”: the tropical nursery that houses 16,000 accessions of plants and around 10,000 species, all worked on for scientific research, conservation, and to produce plant material for the display houses.

The nursery is extra busy at the moment, filled with plants carefully stored in specialist ‘air pots’ decanted from the Victorian glasshouse – the biggest in the world – while it is restored.

One plant that tropical nursery supervisor Rebecca Hilgenhof is keen to show off is Trochetiopsis ebenus – aka St Helena Ebony – which has recently been thriving at Kew but was previously thought to be extinct.

“Due to overgrazing in the 18^th century, the St Helena species was virtually destroyed in terms of vegetation so it had been regarded as extinct in the wild,” she tells the Standard.

“But luckily in 1980, a botanist called Quentin Kronk, who is associated with our research Kew here, rediscovered two plants down on a cliff in St Helena.

“They sent a volunteer down that securely rescued material of both specimens and these were brought back to the collection here.

“Over the course of many, many years, that seed material was then successfully returned to St Helena and these days you find the plant again in the wild, in its habitat.”

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