Hi I am Jim Arbury and this is my first blog. I am an RHS horticultural specialist with a particular interest and experience in fruit growing. I have worked at Wisley for 30 years and so have seen the orchard and fruit gardens through many contrasting seasons. I have been involved with all aspects of fruit growing and in my own time grow vegetables and keep bees.

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Hi. We're Katie and Paul and we would like to ask if you're a "fan" of pelargoniums.  We work in the Propagation Department at Wisley (Katie is a trainee, Paul is a long-standing member of staff having once been a trainee but now has many years experience - you can see us in Figure 4 below). 

Fancy a bit of the Mediterranean in your life? A profusion of incredible scent and colour are on show in the Pelargonium display at Wisley. It is on for six weeks from May 4th - come now to see it at its best!
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March was freezing . . . thank goodness for April the drip, drip, drop has been just the ticket, combined with sunshine, to encourage the plants and us all to unfurl from what has been a long and bitter winter. 

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Not many people know that on the western end of Liguria on the Italian Riviera, just before reaching the boundary at Ponte San Luigi, it is possible to admire one of the most delightful gardens created by Sir Thomas Hanbury. In 1867 he bought an estate producing the greatest gardens of the Riviera. Sir Thomas Hanbury was a gardener who, at the end of his life, bought a large estate at Wisley and donated it to the Royal Horticultural Society in 1903 "for the encouragement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture in all its branches". To experience this legendary garden, Emily and Rohanna, two of the second year Wisley Diploma trainees, and I went to the breathtaking Italian Riviera to discover and work in this extraordinary garden.

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Visitors and staff alike may have noticed a sudden and rapid renovation occurring in the Potager at RHS Garden Rosemoor. A new wall here, new paving there and sadly the disappearance of long standing Vitis and Pergolas along with the mournful removal of an iconic Wisteria macrobotrys that has adorned the central structure for the best part of the last 20 years.

 It’s not as bad as it sounds though and there’s no need to panic as the key to renovation is to get your target area to a stage from which it can be developed. This sometimes requires a seemingly drastic reduction of what is already in place so that you have wider parameters to work within and more scope for improvement.
In the Potager, however, it is a case of less is more and the four square iron pergolas that have been removed create a more open feel to the garden and allow the design to flow into that of the Cottage and Herb Gardens more harmoniously.

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New beginnings:

Jan 7th 2013 marks the exciting beginnings for my second year at RHS Wisley.  I am taking over custodianship of the Canal, Walled gardens, Conifer lawn and surround.  For me, and I am sure many other families this is the quintessential vision of Wisley and one I have known of old. 

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Now is one of my favourite times of year as spring starts and the days are getting longer  it is time to start seed sowing and all the promise that holds for the coming year.

I have been busy on the nursery getting the seeds sown ready for the planting season. It started with sowing sweet peas, one seed into a 7cm pot on 15th February but there is still plenty of time to get them going. Ours will soon need potting up into 1 litre pots and tying into canes. Many people set their sweet peas off in the autumn but ours are ready and waiting to get out in the garden by the end of May and always put on a good display in the garden.
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It’s been a hive of activity down in the Glasshouse and now the 'fantasy island of orchids' is open and will run until Sunday 21 April.

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Next time you are near the PBLC site, look out for the newly planted ‘fedge’; it’s a cross between a fence and a hedge, made of willow and you can see it contouring around the Willow bed.

This bed was planted up last winter with a selection of hard wood cuttings, and they have established well in what was a very wet year.

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A soft, light-filled, bird chirping beckons through curtains, before my alarm has even contemplated jarring my dreams with its woeful lament. Despite the faltering march toward springs symphony (yes we know Siberian snow) there remains optimism. At Wisley the *** willows from Seven Acres to the Aboretum are adorned with silvery bunny tail buds. Now that's a sure sign for the bees. Also it's the angle of the sun, it lingers a little longer, shines a little stronger, day by day rising higher, until the skies of summer (I hope) it shall conquer.

It is for this hope that we gardeners brave the cold and prepare. At the moment we are caught up in the excitement of sowing and growing for the summer bedding on the Top Terrace at Wisley Garden. Annually, trainees are given a brief from which to design a scheme for this area, this years theme being centred on the centenary of the Chelsea Flower Show at its current location. It is a very involved process from start to finish, especially for the team of the chosen design, which this year was myself and fellow trainee Tina Garland. In our design we wanted to create a journey through time, showing bedding plants with significance to different periods of gardening in the last 100 years. To reflect this timely journey our design begins with a traditional bedding scheme consisting of edging plant, dot plant and filler plant/s. As you move through the design this conventional layout is deconstructed by spacing the filler plants in decreasingly smaller blocks.
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