14th July - RHS Wisley, Surrey

A cooler morning with some substantial cloud cover and a brisk north easterly wind was the perfect day to finally make our summer visit to the Royal Horticultural Society's flagship gardens at Wisley in Surrey.

The gardens are laid out with many formal gardens in the middle and around the outside, with the River Wey as the boundary, arboretums and pinetums and wild flower gardens.  Here the map of the gardens.

The first thing to catch the eye as we walked through the entrance was the lawn around the cafe and terrace restaurant.  Th egrass was like straw, when we had been here at the end of May it was still very green.

After coffee we set off around the old house and the formal ponds with many different types of water lilies, they were all looking splendid, but then again they were sitting in water, not yet affected by the drought.

We walked up the hill towards the clear lake and I was taken by some of the plants on either side of the path, love the rich purple and the deep green of the leaves along with the markings in this heliotropium.

And these, a mass of very small flowers creating a mist in the border.

Butterflies were abundant, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper all three whites and this fine Painted Lady.

We were heading for Oudolf's Landscape, a winding path that leads to a mound that is covered all the way around with lavender.  Opened in May 2024, the landscape replace linear borders with a sinuous path.  Created by Piet Oudolf, a Dutch gardener who specialises in matrix planting which features grids of natural planting combinations.  The gardens contain 36,000 perennials and features islands that allow visitors to spend time to enjoy the plants and flowers.

This is the view looking down from the lavender mound towards the Glasshouse showing the winding path.

Before walking down the path we spent some time around the lavender on the mound.

At first look it seems to be just lavender, but looking closer there are many insects.  Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper butterflies and several bumble bees, but the bee that caught out eye was this Green-eyed Flower Bee.

They nest in self dug cavities and like sandy soils such as those found at Wisley.  That plus the abundance of nectar from the lavender.

There were many stunning flowers as we walked through the landscape, but the one that really caught my eye were these 'Blue Globe' thistles.

This one complete with its own Ladybird.

We had lunch at the Glasshouse cafe and then walked along the river walk, something we haven't done before.  There were many dragonflies on the river Wey including Emperor Dragonfly and a Brown Hawker.

The sun had broken through the cloud and conditions had returned to those of the previous few days, hot!  The beauty of having the RHS membership is that you can dip in and out of Wisley enjoying the chance to compare the seasons.  We decided it was now enough and headed home.