The Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley Garden offers everything for a garden lover’s ideal day out, full of take-away ideas for our own gardens. Gertrude Jekyll would have loved this place.

Wisley the Nation’s Favourite Garden

 Entering the Wisley gates this is the scene that meets you. This beautiful half-timbered Lutyens style building built in 1914 is the old Laboratory. Full of character and style, for over a hundred years it has been the classic view of RHS Wisley.

This is the Nation’s favourite garden with something for everyone . The gardener feels a sense of ownership here. It is a place of teaching and inspiration, demonstrating the best horticultural practices and showing off the best plants. The visitor leaves full of inspiration, with a quality plant or two from the Plant Centre, happy memories of a great day out and a determination to work at improving their own plot.

I think Gertrude Jekyll would have recognized many of her ideas here. The old Laboratory reminds us of her own Edwin Lutyens built house and the spectacular herbaceous borders at Wisley are based on her own at Munstead Wood.

‘A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.’

Gertrude Jekyll

Gardening with Style

Alongside the old laboratory is the grand .Jellicoe Canal with not a leaf of duckweed or thread of blanket weed in sight! With 60 different varieties of waterlilies on display this elegant space offers the visitor a calmness to still the spirit.

I have visited Wisley many times. When I first came I can remember being amazed by the stunning double herbaceous borders leading up to Battleston Hill. They are 420 feet long and 15 feet wide. The plants are well staked and full of health and vigour. There are no plants flopping over or weeds here! Subtle drifts of colour harmonies change along the length of the border, bringing a gentle beauty. In the late summer this border is at its peak in a fiery display of colour. Have a look at these great photos:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley/garden-highlights/mixed-borders

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.

Gertrude Jekyll

Don’t miss the Plant Trials at Wisley to see the best plants to grow in our own gardens. The best garden-worthy varieties are awarded an Award of Garden Merit. You can also see the results in the RHS online plant data- base together with an encyclopedia of information about plants for any and every garden.

The RHS and the Future

This glasshouse was built in 2004 to celebrate 200 years of the RHS. On a rainy day, sheltered inside in the comfort, we can enjoy tropical and conservatory plants, ferns, succulents, orchids, insectivorous plants, cacti and succulents. The glasshouse display of houseplants a year or two ago was very popular. Another is due this winter.

The RHS founded in 1804 has become a historic treasure loved by us all. But over recent years the old Laboratory building has been overdue for an update. The new RHS Hilltop building The Home of Gardening Science is now the centre of horticultural research and learning, It opened to the public in June 2021

The Pleasure of Gardening

Returning to my own garden I am grateful for the deep satisfaction and joy of cultivating plants and husbanding my own small plot of God’s good Earth, my own Eden. A garden is a place of healing.

The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives.

After all, what is a garden for? It is for ‘delight’, for ‘sweet solace’, for ‘the purest of all human pleasures, the greatest refreshment for the spirits of men’….it is to ‘call home over-wearied spirits’.

Gertrude Jekyll

Thank you for visiting. Enjoy your own garden this summer.