Here’s something different, Road Trips Gardeners. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, just outside London, England, are sponsoring “Hard Rain”, a photographic exhibit which will be on display May 14 through September 25, 2011, on Kew’s Broadwalk.

This thought provoking and highly topical photographic exhibition is in two parts. It opens with the Hard Rain banner, consisting of 43 photographs demonstrating each line of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’.

The second part is entitled ‘What’ll You Do Now?’ and explores solutions to the problems illustrated in Hard Rain. From new technologies and development projects through to lifestyle approaches, the display highlights British-led solutions at home and overseas, and presents to visitors the need for them to be scaled up and widely adopted to help create a more sustainable future.

The story of the exhibition began in 1969 when its founder Mark Edwards, lost on the edge of the Sahara desert, was rescued by a Tuareg nomad who led him to his camp, made a fire and started playing Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’. Edwards was inspired to set out on a 30-year photographic journey taking him to over 150 countries. The result is ‘Hard Rain’, a photographic essay following the Dylan lyric line by line to illustrate the interlinked challenges of poverty, population expansion, habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution and the wasteful use of resources. Often considered in isolation, these challenges are all intrinsically linked with climate change.

The exhibit is presented by Hard Rain Project and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and supported by People’s Postcode Lottery.

(Photo courtesy of Hard Rain Project)