Managing Change at RHS Wisley

It’s always been the why behind a garden that’s interested me as much as what’s in it. Why it was created. Why things have been altered. So, a tour of RHS Wisley with Curator Matthew Pottage explaining some of the changes was always going to be better than a simple visit.

Members of the Professional Garden Photographers’ Association had arranged to meet up at the garden and we were delighted to realise that the expected introductory talk was actually a tour to explain the background to the many recent changes.

My group was led by Matthew who said some of his decisions, such as the removal of bedding plants and the ‘model gardens’, hadn’t always gone down well with visitors.

“People were shocked when we took out the areas of bedding,” he said, adding that the decision was motivated mainly by the amount of care and watering such planting schemes need.

Meanwhile, the model gardens, many of them former Chelsea show gardens, were never intended to be long term constructions and were beginning to fall apart. Removing them along with fruit and vegetable gardens, also helped his overall aim of giving a more cohesive feel to Wisley with areas that flow easily from one to another.

That RHS Wisley was different since my last visit was apparent from the start. A sleek Welcome Building now greets visitors while a three-year project to refurbish the Old Laboratory is finished. This beautiful building now has a foreground of planting – raised beds with topiary and a bulb lasagne in grass – to provide a buffer with the car park and give it more garden-like setting.

“We wanted to wrap it in horticulture,” explained Matthew.

It’s also been used as an opportunity to introduce more planted containers, something he felt had been lacking at Wisley, and these are now clustered around seats, creating a garden feel.

The other major change was the addition of Hilltop, a building that includes research laboratories, a library, and an exhibition space.

Around it are three gardens designed by award-winning designers Ann-Marie Powell and Matt Keightley. Ann-Marie has created the World Food Garden, celebrating everything edible, and the Wildlife Garden, illustrating how to create a garden that wildlife will like, while Matt’s design is the Wellbeing Garden, which is trying to discover exactly what it is in a garden that makes us feel good

Even RHS Wisley isn’t immune from the sort of problems the average gardener faces and the World Food Garden is surrounded by high fencing to keep out badgers and deer, which is doubling up as a support for climbing plants.

Part of the education of Hilltop includes one area of log piles and a ‘dead hedge’ lining paths.

“We talk a lot in the RHS about planet friendly gardens and we need to be showing it,” commented Matthew.

This sentiment is behind changes to the orchard, originally laid out in the 50s with a full irrigation and spraying regime. The decision to move away from chemicals has resulted in a rise in pests and there is a gradual move towards groves rather than close planted trees.

“It’s a bit of a slow burn but it’s very exciting.”

Indeed, the need to deal with a changing climate underpins many of the changes, including the creation of a lake where the old trial beds used to be. Work on it finished last August and it is now full from rainwater and water collected from the Hilltop roof and paths. Water from this lake will be used to irrigate the trees and shrubs on Battleston Hill.

A ‘boat house’ and pavilion, both made from oak, will provide somewhere to sit and paths are being designed to link to the Jubilee Arboretum, what Matthew described as “the least visited part of Wisley”.

The trial beds have moved nearer the entrance, which is encouraging more visitors to take a look at them. These are where the Wisley team test out new varieties of plants, while in the Walled Garden a trial for possible box replacements has been running for more than eight years.

As for many gardeners, it’s been a tough winter – temperatures dropped to minus 10 – and there have been big losses of pittosporum, corokea and leptospermum with Matthew estimating that 98 per cent of the garden’s hebes had died.

“People love it when we have failures,” he said ruefully.

Many of the plants have been left in the trial beds to see if there’s a chance they will recover and, while the loss isn’t good, it will help to shape the advice Wisley can give.

Meanwhile, Matthew is determined that this year there will be the early purple wisteria in flower on the Wisteria Walk rather than just the later white variety. It’s usually hit by frost and he recently organised teams to camp out with fire bowls under the arches to keep the frost at bay.

Alongside the walk, more varieties, given by a National Collection holder, are now being grown up individual obelisks to increase the range – I saw something similar at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens.

Elsewhere, old wooden bridges have been replaced with Corten steel, the second Alpine House is being refurbished to house cushion alpines, and Wisley’s collection of orchids will finally have a display space in the The Glasshouse. The Piet Ouldolf-designed Glasshouse Borders are being redone and will have paths that run through the planting rather than a central grass path. Work is due to start this autumn.

Of course, the real reason for visiting RHS Wisley is to see the plants and there was plenty of spring colour that brightened up what became a rather overcast day.

And the spring blossom was breathtaking.

Details of opening hours and admission times for RHS Wisley are on the website.

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