Bompas and Parr's fruit salad boating lake at Kew Gardens

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Created on Thursday, 28 February 2013 11:15

Written by Catherine Hanly

They created a giant punch bowl you could row across and put a boating lake on the top of Selfridges. Now food installation artists Bompas & Parr are turning their sights on Kew. They'll be transforming Kew's Palm House Pond into a giant fruit salad boating lake, the centrepiece of which will be a floating pineapple island, a symbol of Kew’s extensive bromeliad collection.

Visitors will stroll over a walkway running across the water to the island, and watch the small rowing boats, decorated to resemble slices of papaya, melon, durian and pear, drift past. Or they can hire a boat themselves, explore the pond, and enter the secret grotto beneath the pineapple.

"A partnership with Kew makes complete sense for us," says Sam Bompas. "Their concern with the world’s plant life directly provides us with our raw materials of creativity. Our design process always starts with a raw ingredient – be it fruit, alcohol, chocolate, or coffee. Trace any ingredient back far enough and you get to plants.

"The Gardens are an emerald treasury for London..it’s possible to persuade Londoners to become tourists in their own city. We defy them not to have fun.”

Tutti Frutti will be at Kew Gardens from Sat 25 May to Sun 1 September 2013 every day from 10-5pm (last boat ride 4:40pm. Boating tickets will be available from kiosk by the pond. It's part of the IncrEdibles festival at Kew which runs from 25 May - 3 November 2013 and aims to showcase the edible plants growing in the Gardens. For more information go to http://www.kew.org

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