My Garden

On Tuesday 24th June, Wisley was transformed into a midsummer wonderland by the WI with their scarecrow-inspired evening. The night was in honour of the 90th Anniversary of the Surrey Federation WIs and thousands of WI members from across the county came to celebrate.Click on www.thewi.org.uk/surrey or http://www.thewi.org.uk/standard.aspx?id=11462 for more information.

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At the very front of the garden members of the Glasshouse team have been planting up the traditional carpet bed display in front of the Laboratory building.  This 14ft square is the most intensely planted part of the garden, with approximately 10,000 plants here.  Lucinda Lachelin, Senior Supervisor of the Glasshouse created this year’s design.  With the help of many from the Glasshouse team it is now finished – as I’m sure you can appreciate, it’s a somewhat time-consuming task. 

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Over at the Glasshouse the team have been busy potting up and moving large planters for outside display. 

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The finishing touch to the Top Terrace Chinese Dragon bedding display is the golden eye for each of the 8 dragons.  All in all this display involved 20 members of staff plus invaluable help from our garden volunteers. 

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Over the last couple of weeks, the Floral Ornamental Department have been at full capacity planting out the summer bedding displays.  Seasonal bedding and makes up a large amount of our displays, and the team are flat out. 

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Meet the Gardeners continued throughout half term last week.  On Thursday it was the Alpine Department who enthalled our youngest visitors.  They had a field day with Sempervivum, otherwise known as house leeks. 

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And here they are, the finished scarecrows in position guarding the germinating sweetcorn that will grow to become the Maize Maze.

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This half term has so far been warm and wet, but that hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of our youngest visitors.  Our Meet the Gardeners activities today were based up at the Maize Maze.

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Friday 9th May we began sowing the seed for the highly anticipated Maize Maze on the site of the old glasshouse.  It was the sunflowers we began with, sowing 5,000 seeds of a cultivar from Thompson and Morgan called ‘Bicentenary’ that was named in honour of the RHS’s 200th birthday in 2004.  We’ve got this along the front and sides of the area in a 1m border.

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As part of the increasing popular trend to grow your own produce at home, our latest development in the Model Fruit Garden is our Grow Your Own Fruit and Veg garden which will complement the 3 x 3m plots in the Model Veg Garden as well as the Gourmet Fruit Garden, Allotment Garden, Fruit Enthusiasts Garden and the rest of what we have here.  I really am impressed by the diversity and range of what we demonstrate in this small area!

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We’ve been planting up the Fruit Mount this week.  Following the excavations for the Glasshouse Lake the spoil was used to enlarge this popular feature.  We’ve already put in place new railings with step-over cordon apples – very pretty.  Starting from the top of the Mount with 'Court Pendu Plat', introduced circa 1200 AD (although it possibly dates back to Roman times), they descend in order of age of the cultivar with the most recent introductions at the bottom, and with room to add new ones. 

We are in the process of planting up the sloping sides of the Fruit Mount.  We had to decide on the best way to do this.  The angles vary from 25 to 45 degrees.  So we have chosen to use a ground cover material to pin into the soil to keep the weeds suppressed and through this we’re planting a dwarf myrtle, Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina AGM.  It has a compact form with dainty leaves and small white flowers in summer followed by white fruits and in total we need about 8,000 plants to cover the whole surface.  We’ll be finishing the planting in the autumn

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Wisley has welcomed some willow sculptures. 

Since early April some new and interesting additions have arrived in the garden.  A 6ft high pear, a 5ft giant apple sliced in two, and a 7ft tall mushroom accompanied by smaller ones to make a fairy ring.  And outside the Model Vegetable Garden are 10ft high inverted roots arching over the entrances

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Last Thursday 10^th April we had the official opening of the new Alpine Display House, sponsored by Alitex, after a lot of hard work by staff in many departments to ensure everything was ready in time.   I was joined by our President Peter Buckley and the mother of Alitex CEO Tom Hall for the official ribbon cutting ceremony.  But we had no ribbon.  Instead the currently-resident willow weaver Tom Hare had enlisted the help of children to create a linked chain made of willow.  Find out more about our willow weaving next week…. 

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Here is an instance where we are inviting you NOT to copy our lead. Despite what it may look like, we have not been using a radical new method to prune our climbing roses on the Weather Hill Rose Garden. Instead, we've been chopping them back to make their removal easier.

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This week we have welcomed two large pieces of Chinese sculpture to Wisley. These striking pieces are here until 25^th June as part of CHINA NOW, the UK's largest ever festival of Chinese culture. (Visit www.chinanow.org.uk for more details).

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