Perhaps in tribute to the informal tone and the hydrangeas of this last, we closed this visit with visit to the hydrangeas in the woods out the back, behind the garden shop. Very nice they were too, with rather more oddities than were to be found at Ventnor, including a climbing hydrangea.
Rather more contrived was the coloured water in two of the ponds, one blue and one black. At first we thought that the colour was just that of the lining of the ponds but on closer inspection we decided that dye had been put in the water itself. Striking, but you need to have moving water, some kind of a water feature to make it work. All a bit too complicated for replication at home. Not to mention the complication of sourcing the non-toxic dyes.
Another oddity was a euphorbia in the cactus part of the big greenhouse. But wikipedia puts me right, it pointing out that there has been convergent evolution between the euphorbiae of South Africa and the cacti of South America, all mixed up in this display. Wikipedia also points out that one of the euphorbiae common in this country, E. lathyris, is commonly called spurge because of the spurgative effects of its seeds, taken orally. Our naval aunt used to call it the mole plant, a mystery now cleared up, having just read that it is believed to deter moles and gophers.
The big greenhouse also contained a small but very extravagant display of begonias, the sort of begonia that you grow for their leaves rather than their flowers, and a rather larger display of fuschias.
Outside the big greenhouse they had planted at least two sorts of meadows, the idea being that they were cut just once a year and then had to manage under their own steam. No water and no weeding. The meadows had been carefully seeded with exotics and were not like the water meadows you grow cows on at all, but they looked rather well just the same.
The Alice in Wonderland theme that we had noticed on the previous visit was very much in evidence. All rather tiresome to my mind and I was not at all convinced that the many small children around the place were very impressed either. But the mums liked it. And there were a great many of them, more I think than I have ever seen there before. Fortunately Wisley is a big place and one could easily get away from them when one had had enough.
Clearly the RHS management committee knew what it was up to when it acquired such a large plot of land on the southern outskirts of London. Although checking their site this morning the story seems to be that it is only 60 acres - while I would have guessed a lot more than that, say 600 acres, roughly a square mile. However, a quick peek at gmaps suggests that it is very roughly 500 by 500 yards, so the people at Wisley do indeed know their own size. Strange that my guess was so wrong.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/wisley-1.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/botanic-1.html.
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