As far as the plants are concerned, not all that much to add to what I said last year, but I do draw attention to the fine display of various kinds of hydrangea, mostly grown in the shade underneath trees, rather than up against a sunny wall, which seems to be the way that most domestic gardeners do it and as did FIL. Perhaps what they really need is warm & wet, with this site being so warm (for England) that it can manage without the sun. And it is certainly true that many of our favourite house plants are ground & shade plants hailing from sub-tropical forests. Got a real bang out of the various succulents, particularly the giant (Mexican) aloes. Don't know why. Also to be found at Hampton Court Palace and at Wisley. Got a real hit from the very hot hot house - 40C plus and humidity said to be in the nineties. Not sure that I could stand it for very long, but worth it for the plants, particularly the giant lily.
Catering facilities now back in-house, having once been contracted out to the nearby Royal Hotel (not so grand these days), and good sandwiches were only marred by bad music. Management had thought it a good idea for there to be live music but could not afford good music, so we had bad music (the sort of thing you might get in TB on a Friday evening) from which there was no escape. The catering staff were sympathetic and apologetic, but there seemed to be nothing that they could do about it. Most customers seemed to be sitting as far away from it as could be managed.
All of which led onto a worry about the future. The gardens are run as a relatively young sort of entity (invented in 2005 or so) called a community interest company, a device which combines some of the features of a charity with some of those of an ordinary limited company, perhaps a device which brings practise here closer to that on the continent where they have, I dare say, as much charity as we do but no charities. Maybe something like the not-for-profit outfits you get in the US. They have their very own quango which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-regulator-of-community-interest-companies, a New Labour quango which seems to have been left out of the Tory bonfire of same. So far so good.
But I imagine that the local authority grant which kept this fine place afloat has been heavily cut if not withdrawn. So how is it going to make a living? They might use lots of volunteers, but this is a large garden and there are going to be running costs. Are they getting enough visitors to cover them? The place was pleasantly quiet when we were there, a quiet which was very much part of the attraction; one doesn't want to be the only party there, but one does not want crowds either. Is that a viable proposition in the absence of public funds? The attempt to drum up custom in the restaurant with music suggests to me that maybe it is not.
Oddly, while there are donation boxes at the site itself, there do not seem to be any such boxes at the web site.
PS 1: the reorganised entry arrangements, included being issued with something rather like the wrist band you get given in a hospital to stop you being muddled up with someone else. Perhaps not quite the thing as most of the visitors are going to be old enough to know that.
PS 2: we subsequently bumped into a chap who had moved from Deptford to Sandown for the sake of his lungs, which were, in consequence, much improved. From which we deduce that the people putting the sanitorium on the island know what they were about.
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