Wisley, on this account are taking the high road. They offer lots of splendid gardens, lots of splendid trees and one very large hot house. Plus other attractions too numerous to enumerate here. But all this costs of lot of money, even if a lot of your gardeners were students or volunteers - which might be the case, but I don't know to be the case. So Wisley does lots of catering, a shop, a garden centre (some of the plants in which come from the same wholesaler as is used by the rather nearer Chessington Garden Centre) and attractions. Various attractions put on in the course of the Wisley year. So in late January the very large hot house is turned over to a lot of exotic butterflies, most of which are hatched on the premises. No idea where the eggs come from, and their web site seems to be more interested in selling me tickets than telling me about eggs.
So on Saturday to Wisley with butterflies in mind, to find that lots of other people have had the same idea, complete with lots of children, a fair proportion of whom were far too young to take much interest. There were also signs that over the next year or so they might move to charging extra (entry to Wisley is presently free to members, with membership being good value for us as we live quite nearby) and to timed tickets, for all the world like one of those shows at the National Gallery. The net result was that one did not get to see all that much of the splendid plants on offer - but, to be fair, the butterflies were pretty splendid too. With the bigger ones having oddly drooping wings with a flight to match. It was also very hot, all the more so as it had just turned cold outside.
Out and off to the main café for tea and cake, my cake being a rather fine,mainly yellow confection of polenta with almonds and apricots on top.
From there to inspect Battleston Hill, to find magnolias well in bud and quite a lot of camelias in flower. But the star of this part of the visit was the stand of eucalyptus trees, with their patterned bark looking really special in the winter light. From their down to the trial beds of Brussels Sprouts from which I abstracted three sprouts, it being too late by the time that I found the notice about thieves being prosecuted. Another bed, not looking particularly special, but clearly special to someone, came with a fairly serious looking electric fence, perhaps serving to deter both humans and rabbits.
The trial beds field was ringed with some fine trees, including some sequoia, sequoia which are visible but not really shown off to good effect in the snap above.
Quite a lot of snowdrops, some winter aconites and a few small daffodils, maybe the sort called narcissii. Whereas my winter aconites, in the new daffodil bed, seem to have more or less vanished.
One good tweet in the form of a pair of chaffinches, the first sighting of such around here for a while, with the last notices being from January 2014 and December 2012. With a similarly thin record at the other place, that is to say reference 1.
One very strange sedum on the way out. I remember 'sedum monstrous' or something like that but the best that google can do with that is something called 'stapelia leendertziae cristata', the wrong plant but with some of the more droopy offerings having vaguely the same shape and habit. Must remember to snap its ticket next time.
Last visit more than a couple of months ago. See reference 2. Notice also the lamentable failure to settle to a standard protocol for search keys.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=chaffinch.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/wisley-1.html.
Group search key: wsa.
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