Pleasure gardens

We paid a visit to Wisley a week ago, the first visit for something over four months. So our pensioner plus visitor membership continues to pay its way. A botanical garden which is morphing into a pleasure garden, one which is keen to maintain visitor numbers all through the year. And succeeding as the car park was busy enough when we arrived that I thought it wise to take a picture of where we left the car.

Car locator snap

Unnecessarily, as it turned out that BH could both remember the route from the car to the front entrance and reverse it.

Afterwards, we wondered whether Wisley had got it right: they had spent a great deal of money on seasonal attractions, including lots of lights and sounds, but a lot of the visitors were probably members like ourselves, not making additional contributions to the funds. Maybe the thinking is that more families will sign up for membership if they know it is an all year round destination for children?

The battle bus

The message

A route which included taking in a slightly derelict campaign to persuade us not just to pave over our front gardens. A campaign which might usefully have gone to work on our estate in Epsom, where a lot of front gardens have indeed been turned over to cars, with many families having two, some three and a few even more of them. A turning over often compounded by what had been originally been the garage having been incorporated into the house. It being a bit of a puzzle to me why so many couples of middle years with empty nests, spend so much time and treasure enlarging said empty nests. What on earth do they want all the space for? Plus, these enlargements often do bad things to the external appearance of the houses concerned.

It was not a particularly warm day and I had forgotten my gloves, so first stop was the shop to see if they sold them. It turned out that they sold a range of decorative gloves for children and ladies, but for gentlemen one had to buy gardening gloves, of which there was quite a selection, and I got something sensible for around £7.50. Made in China (or perhaps Vietnam) from some sort of soft textile, with plastic coating on the working surfaces, which served well enough on this day and will serve well enough in the garden in days to come. I have a bet on with BH about whether the shop will be selling regular gentlemen's gloves by this time next year - having agreed that the shop at Chessington Garden Centre probably did already.

Plastic flowers

Part of the Christmas show was clumps of large artificial flowers planted at various points around the garden. Clumps which I much preferred to the proper - and usually ugly - sculpture that they usually go in for. Both jolly and temporary, both excellent qualities in garden sculptures. There were also a small number of real snowdrops and a small number of very short blue irises. But see reference 2 for other thoughts on both plastic flowers and snowdrops.

Poinsettia towers

A high spot of the visit was a visit to the large hot house, free of butterflies on this occasion - but certainly not free of people young and old. Plus we had towers of poinsettias for a Christmas display. Which I now know to be yet another garden plant which came to us from Mexico, yet another euphorbia, a family containing lots of attractive plants, with most of the ones that I know being green and yellow, not flashily red like this one.

Trunk

Crown

The organisation of the growing tips of some of the dry zone plants was rather odd; couldn't work out what was going on at all; not at all like the growing tip of a deciduous tree in our damp and temperate zone. And the patterns of leaf scars on the trunks of one of them was very striking - so striking that I noticed what looked like a very similar plant up in the roof of our own Ashley Centre, back here in Epsom.

Strange and tropical

Slipper orchid

And we had a small but attractive display of slipper orchids on the way out. Decided against the cafeteria outside the hothouse as it was full of young families, and made our way past what seemed like lots of attractively coloured willows and dogwoods to the main cafeteria where we opted for a soup and sandwich sort of lunch. The soup was a bit veggie, but OK, but the meal as a whole involved far too much of some low grade yellow cheese, no doubt sold as cheddar. Must remember to avoid the cheese on future occasions.

Plastic detail

Daffodills

The old house was looking a bit dowdy next to the new entrance block and shop. I thought that there was probably a section of the senior management team which thought that it would be a good idea to demolish it and build something new and more fit for purpose. With the fight to the death between them and the heritage section being set to go on for years. Perhaps they should have a referendum of members? Or perhaps just of fellows?

The old buildings

And what will they do with the entrance block and shop which has now been vacated? It looks a bit new to be knocking it down.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/wisley-themed.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/fake-96.html.