Weather: Warmer today, overcast & almost humid.
Team: Formal
Me & Billy started the morning with paperwork, Wisley like botanic gardens have accession numbers and plant records for all their plants. Jill is the plant records officer based in the Herbarium. As we had taken plants from propagation we had to record what they were and where we were placing them.
We went on the hunt a little for some rare plants that Iris from Propagation was trying to find, these included an
Epimedium sulphureum 'Plena' and
Eucryphia x
intermedia 'Grayswood'.
I had a plant ident workshop, this is our first one and it was on weeds found in Wisley. James Armitage the botanist & Barry Philips went through what may come up on our plant ident test and tips on how to recognise them. I knew all of them by sight but it was good to get clarification & confirmation of their names. These weeds are of strong interest to me because of my interest in meadows and wildflowers. Gardens like Wisley I am told actually have a diverse range of native plants, even though one might not assume so as one associates it with intense cultivation. But James brought it home that commercial farming is much more so. Wisley even has some very rare plants,
Neottia nidus-avis a non-photosynthetic orchid can be found here.
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| One of the 'weeds' - Solanum nigrum aka Black Nightshade, potato family - SOLANACEAE. |
After the workshop we did more planting in the Gravel Garden -
Grevillea lanigera 'Mount Tamboritha',
Scutellaria scordifolia 'Seoul Sapphire', a red flowered
Coreopsis verticillata 'Ruby Red' and
Calceolaria integrifolia 'Kentish Hero'. Everything is all watered in well. Doing planting here is not so straight forward, as there is two layers of gravel on this bed, I first had to take out the gravel of where I wanted to plant and any extra soil, then I had to re-gravel it afterwards. These are all cultivars but there are a lot of interesting species plants in this bed also. Billy doesn't follow a plan of planting for this area, the only aesthetic remit is that they are trying to have a dry/ gravel garden that does not consist of too many silver plants. He plants it up as he goes a long and as he sees fit. A lot of the plants are yet to mature, but generally it is about giving each plant it's own space. This is then probably one of the areas most close to how usually botanical garden is laid out. Then I did some clearing of the dead leaving some of the more interesting seedheads like from Eryngiums etc. I was intrigued with how a lot of plants that I thought were borderline tender were grown here, like
Watsonia meriania var.
bulbillifera.
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| Calceolaria integrifolia 'Kentish Hero' |
Here are some of the plants that caught my eye:
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| Rehmannia elata - the Peking foxglove is a gorgeous plant. |
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| Echium wildpreti - I am amazed to see this here, they are native to Tenerife at quite high altitude at the foot of Teide volcano. I saw them in the wild but just after flowering, so I look forward to seeing this in full bloom next year! |
