A Curate’s Egg of a Visit to Wisley

Our allotment had its annual outing to Wisley this week and it proved to be a very mixed bag. There were some superb plants including a magnificent Cornus ‘Venus’ with enormous white flowering bracts on Battlestone Hill, a vivid blue Moltkia petraea in the Alpine Garden, and a Dianthus erinaceus forming a huge green mound in the Alpine Glasshouse. Other highlights were a delicate gladiolus on the Rock Bank which might be Gladiolus scullyi and some wonderful scented leaved and species pelargonium in the Glasshouse that included G. papilionaceum with striking leaves the size of dinner plates. Less impressive were some dated and tired looking small town gardens that are in urgent need of a revamp and a bizarre new area of carpet bedding surrounding some rather cracked paving. I can only think that it is a temporary solution and that something more attractive will replace it in the autumn. So, a bit of a curate’s egg, but it has been a difficult gardening year and the lack of colour is something that we are all experiencing.

The Highlights at Wisley

The Lowlights at Wisley