RHS Wisley in a Brown Winter Coat

It's been quite some time since I made a visit to RHS Wisley, so when my friend suggest we went to Wisley on Sunday I was more than happy. The weather, however, was not on our side and it was drear and dank with that horrible drizzle which is quite wetting. I have been using my iPhone for taking photos so I decided to give my Nikon DSLR an airing.

After re-fuelling with coffee an shortbread we started in the the Winter Walk which starts at the Food Hall and takes you pass beds of Hellebores and Witch Hazel ( Hamamelis × intermedia 'Robert', 'Jelena', 'Sunburst', 'Aphrodite' (below) and 'Barmstedt Gold ').

Someone said that at the moment the witch hazel looked as though someone has been busy with the marmalade and I had never thought that before but now that's all I see!

As I have already mentioned it was a dismal day so the photos are indicative of the light levels. We went pass the lake with the impressive different flaming colours of the Cornus (dogwood) and Salix ( willow).

We called into the magnificent glasshouse, as did most people, wanting to get out of the rain. Wisley was definitely wearing a brown winter overcoat with the pillars of brown leaved beech standing tall through the grasses. .

The minute we entered the glasshouse my camera lens misted up so I had to resort to my iPhone. Going into the butterfly section was like entering a children's playground and a buggy show, it was packed (no exaggeration) with double buggies and a fair share of crying children!

It is still too early in the year for most of the butterflies but there were a lot of the beautiful Blue Morpho. Most were feeding with their wings closed so capturing their open wings showing why they are called blue, was not that easy.

The Glasshouse Border, based on an original concept by the Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, was also an abundance of brown, looking even darker because of the wet day. Lots of structure was there still, and I expect a return in February will see it all cut down.

This was the view from the rock garden, again lots of brown, but we could see tiny green shoots of bulbs coming through - signs of Spring.

Monday - Friday 10am-4.30pm Sat - Sun & Bank Hols 9am-4.30pm

We paid a visit to the Alpine House and were a bit bewildered by the array of narcissus all looking the same but were actually different varieties. The only difference we could see was a slight variance in shade.

RHS Garden Wisley, Woking, is open all year except Christmas Day an.d is free for RHS members.

The Butterflies in the Glasshouse event - starts 14 January.

Categories: Garden blogging, Garden visiting | Tags: Garden blogging, Garden visiting, Glasshouse Borders, RHS Wisley | Permalink.