Gardens
RHS Garden Wisley
Plants of Current Interest
Welcome to Wisley in mid-summer.
Wisley has been the principal garden of the Royal Horticultural Society since 1903. We have one of the largest and most diverse plant collections in the world.
Ground level
At this time of year the summer bedding schemes are looking their best. Outside the Laboratory you can find the traditional carpet bedding, where the colour comes from foliage rather than flower colour.
Summer bedding
Along the Canal Border, Walled Garden East and Top Terrace you can find inspirational planting schemes including half-hardy plants like verbena, gaura, penstemon, salvia, helichrysum, heliotrope and rudbeckia.
Look skyward
Another dimension is brought to the garden with plants that climb. In all corners of the garden you can find plants climbing up walls, trellis, and other supports.
Edible climbers
In the Model Vegetable Garden you can find climbing French beans, such as ‘Cobra’ AGM and runner beans like ‘Wisley Magic’ AGM. These gain height by twisting themselves around their supports. In the greenhouse are four cucumbers, natural climbers, and outside you can find peas. These plants use tendrils, modified leaves, to attach themselves to their supports. In the Potager three ‘Black Forest’ courgettes are growing up a pyramid of hazel sticks. This courgette has a trailing habit, but it will climb if given a little help with regular tying in.
Model Fruit
Over in the Model Fruit Garden you can find more beans, including the purple dolichos bean, Lablab purpureus ‘Ruby Moon’, in the allotment garden. (You can also see this along the Canal Borders.) Sweet peas climb over archways of peasticks, and towards the back between the allotment garden and the woodland fruit garden is a golden hop, Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’ AGM. The vibrant, lime green foliage gives this fast growing plant high ornamental value. You can find another example of it growing in the Herb Garden. It climbs up supports with its rough-textured twining stems.
Fruity climbers
Other fruity climbers here include grape (Vitis) and kiwi fruit (Actinidia). You can see some grapes growing in the model fruit garden but for larger scale visit the vineyard in the southern section of the Fruit Field. Grapes grow up supports by means of tendrils, but unlike those of peas and cucumbers, these are modified stems.
Witan Street
Beside the Glasshouse is a new development of domestic size gardens called Witan Street, and the first two gardens have just been completed. Along the street is a sweet pea ‘hedge’, and you can find more sweet peas in the Trials Field, demonstrating dwarf, semi-dwarf, bush and cordon growth habits.
Mixed Borders
One of the spectacular sights in Wisley in summer is the pair of Mixed Borders. Giving height to this planting scheme are a number of clematis. Clematis ‘Etoile Violet’ AGM produces masses of saucer-shaped purple blooms. Four individual plants grow together over peasticks to give greater impact, gripping on by wrapping their leaf stalks around the supports.
Less common are climbing Dicentra and Aconitum that grow here and in the Wild Garden.
Walled Garden
Sheltered within the Walled Garden more exotic and slightly tender climbers grow. Among them are Dregea sinensis, a twining, evergreen woody climber with bowl-shaped, fragrant yellow or white flowers. You can find this in the Wild Garden too. Passiflora, Trachelospermum jasminoides, Schizophragma and an ornamental kiwi Actinidia pilosula, which looks like its leaves have been dipped in white paint, are some of the other climbers in this area.
Wild rose
The Wild Garden provides a home to many climbers that naturally make their home in woodland environments. In early July you might see the pink flowers of Rosa ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ AGM clambering up an oak tree in the middle of the garden. And you might still find some climbing roses in flower in the Rose Garden and the Weather Hill rope walk catenary.
Evergreen for everything
A significant climber no matter what the time of year is ivy. Its evergreen foliage comes in shades of green, yellow and cream, and it has huge benefits for wildlife. Many different types of ivy grow in virtually every part of the garden.