The World Environment Day - Time capsule project is an initiative of Professor John Guillebaud (physician and environmentalist), who, along with leading personalities such as
•Environmentalist, David Bellamy
•Renowned Actress, Susan Hampshire
•Lord Mayor of Kew and Richmond
•Director of Kew Gardens, Professor G. Prance
The purpose of this project, and how will it contribute towards making the world an environmentally safer place for our descendants?
The Text Reads:
World Environment Day
TIME CAPSULE
The Time Capsule placed near this plaque in June 1994 contains letters and objects linked to the many environmental concerns felt by the children of today.
Letters from the adults apologise for the overcrowding, pollution and resource scarcity we fear we will leave behind. They also state our commitment to overcome these problems through individual and concerted action, so that all species may share life together on a safe and sustainable planet.
Our goal is to make the apology unnecessary by the time the capsule is opened on 5 June 2044.
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
"In 1994 placed time capsules in various parks and gardens and other suitable locations around the world, to be opened in the Year 2044, just 50 years from the time the original capsule was buried in Kew Gardens. The other sites were in: the Wirral, UK (Ness Gardens), the Seychelles, New South Wales, Mexico & South Africa." Text Source: (
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The Hive is an abstract sculpture, over 60 feet tall, lattice of octagonal shapes. Fitted with thousands of LED lights that glow and fade as a unique soundtrack hums & buzzes around you.
The Hive at Kew Gardens. An open-air structure standing at 60 feet tall made from 170,000 pieces of aluminium & weighing over 80,000 pounds. The Hive encapsulates the story of the honeybee and the important role of pollination in feeding the planet. Explore the hive through an immersive light & sound experience, as you hear music created by the bees.
From Wolfgang Buttress Website & a Newspaper report.
“My approach to a sculpture seeks to frame nature so one can experience it more intimately,” says British artist Wolfgang Buttress, whose 17-metre high Hive installation opens at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, in London on Saturday. “I want visitors to feel enveloped, wrapped-up and involved in the experience, rather than adopting the position of an external observer.
Its 170,000 pieces of aluminium, suspended from the ground, appear as a twisting swarm of bees from afar, but as you come closer it becomes a hive-like structure of latticework whose low humming sound and hundreds of flickering LED lights draws you in to a multi-sensory instillation. The intensity of sound and light is controlled by the vibrations of honeybees in an actual hive at Kew that is connected to the sculpture.
Honeybees communicate primarily with each other through vibrations. By biting a wooden stick connected to a conductor, visitors to the Hive can get a sense of four types of vibrational messages through the bones in their head. These include the tooting and quacking signals that virgin queen bees make when they challenge each other in a display of strength to determine who will be the queen of the hive; begging, when a bee requests food from another another; and the waggle dance which communicates the location of a good food source. Text Source: (
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