We had our first Malay Lacewing (pictured below) emerge this week, with its beautiful fluted wing edge, and many others followed along with plenty of Tree Nymphs (the balck and white butterfly pictured lower down the page), Blue Morphos and Giant Orange Tips.  The snowy weather has been a challenge as optimum conditions for butterfly flight are bright and sunny and around 26-28°C so for those who dared to venture out in the snow a little more spotting skill and patience was required to spot all of the species (about 26 different ones) we have at the moment.

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John Steinbeck said: “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” Surely after all the wintery weather we have had of late, it must be time for a sweet summer ahead. But actually I quite like some bits of winter, the excess of layers, of hats, hoods, scarfs, mittens and gumboots. A time of bonfires, hot tea, pruned branches and puddles with deep reflections.
I am now working with the Turf Team, who, you guessed it, look after all the turf at Wisley, but actually they do other things besides, including helping keep the gardens accessible to the public. After the snow and rain of late there were some rather overflowing ditches in the Wild Garden, so we donned the waders and got into some pretty cool waters to inspect was causing the blockage of flow.

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The first weekend of the event went really well with many of the pupae we stuck last week emerging. 

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Hi. I'm Cara Smith, a horticulturist in the Glasshouse at RHS Garden Wisley.  At this time of year I'm also responsible for care of the butterflies during the Butterflies in the Glasshouse event.

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 A frosty view from the propagation glasshouse at Wisley.

The sun breaks through finally on a frosty morning, the moment all morning my fingers and toes have been waiting for. Suddenly the stained glass windowed leaves of the poinsettia shine, eager to be off to their new home, poster children for Christmas in the Wisley Glasshouse. Today we lost them to their new home but there is plenty to be getting on with in propagation, as here its not so much about the present, nor the gifts, but the planning and preparing for the seasons ahead

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Willow is a common thing, so common often we do not know it when we see it. It makes up a green periphery, growing in unkempt lands, on verges, swamplands, the back of beyo nd where it blends in to the landscape quietly as if it had nothing to say. In the aptly titled book Willows (1972) Warren-Wren says: “willow is the Cinderella of the arboreal and horticultural scene, that has waited over an aeon of time for a fairy godmother to grant her wish to go to the ball”. Certainly willow has lived through the ages, through ice ages, a real pioneer, some 400 species of the genus are spread almost entirely across the globe excepting Antarctica and Australasia (where it has since been introduced). Long it has been used by working hands to fashion useful objects, while more recent applications further allude to this genus’s vast usefulness: land drainage, bio remediation, bio filtration, bio engineering and fuel production.

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Here we are November, with the autumn rain and wind driving in under our waterproofs, reminding us that summer has gone and nature is encouraging the plant kingdom to hunker down for the winter’s big sleep.

This is my favourite time of year, would you believe it?  On a good day: the light, the temperature, the colours and the relative calm of slow dormancy in the garden reminds me why I became a horticulturalist.  I say calm, the Formal Department, of which I am part of at Wisley, has been working like whirling dervishes - ripping out summer bedding and replacing it with tens of thousands of pansies and bulbs in quick succession! It is quite a process and well worth a visit to see us with a muddy trowel in hand and determined look on our faces as we work through: the Old Bonsai Garden, Top Terrace, Walled Garden East and the Canal Borders – quite a performance.  In fact as a convert to gardening from Costume Design I see bedding schemes as the ultimate theatrical flora show.  With months of prep and growing-on of garish-coloured pansies or pelargoniums and central eye catchers with urns and coiled box the energy and effort for a three month run is on an operatic scale, exhausting but what a crowd pleaser – I love it

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Everyone knows the old saying about eating an apple a day, but this is just the tiniest tip of the mountain of apple facts and folklore. This wealth of information could perhaps be attributed to the fruit's long association with humans, so long that it might just be the oldest cultivated tree. Ancestral roots are believed to be embedded in montane regions of western Asia, with the centre of genetic diversity of the genus Malus occurring in Turkey. Throughout millennia of cultivation some 7500 different cultivars have been bred for a variety of strengths: storing, eating, juicing, cider- making and cooking. Interestingly the development of the all-important dwarfing rootstocks are believed to originate somewhere in the regions of present day Kazakhstan, discovered apparently by none other than Alexander the Great sometime around 300BC.

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Wisley is among the greatest gardens of the world for its extraordinarily diverse plant collection and displays that every year is showing off a carnival of colours, ideas and concepts; undoubtedly it is one of my favourite gardens!

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It was the light, the way it shone through the seed heads, like they were made of delicate gossamer threads, they came alive and danced, like fireflies across my mind, and at every turn they were there. As part studying for the Diploma of Horticulture at Wisley we have to submit a collection of 10 dried plant specimens, pressed and presented in traditional standard herbarium format. This weekend I began collecting and pressing samples for my chosen topic: grasses. I imagine they will make as beautiful pressed specimens as they do alive and sunlit. Pictured below is the short-lived perennial (often treated as an annual) Hordeum jubatum, or foxtail barley. It can be found on the borders surrounding the Glasshouse Lake at Wisley, an excellent choice for this site, where once established it is happy on dry soils and in full sun.

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