Pointed bridges

At the beginning of the month the weather was bright and warm and some kind of outing was indicated. We settled on Wisley with the trolley, Wisley being a trolley friendly place. With our last visit having been getting on for a couple of months previously, as noticed at reference 1 below.

The first point of interest was the new bridges appearing at the M25/A3 interchange. Unlike most motorway bridges to date which are flush topped or flat decked, these ones, at least as seen as you approach along the road running underneath, are shallow pointed arches. The two halves are flat topped, but they rise slightly towards  the middle, enough to break the line of them. The point might also serve to visually soften the hefty central pillar.

You can't really see the pointed arches in the snaps above, but you can just about make out that the red parapets are not straight over; they do rise in the middle.

Protection against losing our car in the monster and often busy car parks.

The snap does not do justice to the fine bed of mixed spring flowers outside the old building, with the new visitor block visible behind right. I wondered whether there was a faction in the RHS which was all for knocking down the old building and getting more value out of the space - only to be pushed back by a heritage faction, either internal or external. I would say in passing that the RHS delivers a high standard of design both for its new buildings and for its plantings - a lot of which last seem to be turned over reasonably regularly. They must hire a better class of designer.

And thinking of the old building, I remember that it contains boards which commemorate the early directors of the gardens, at that time usually eminent botanists.  I dare say these days they prefer people with experience in running big visitor attractions.

We majored on Battleston Hill, on or in the vicinity of which the snap above was taken. There was a lot of stuff in flower, with a lot of white. Inter alia, magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas camelias. With, being picky, rhododendrons being a genus in the heather family and azaleas being a sub-genus of the rhododendrons, presently with three sections, although sections look to come and go with the vagaries of taxonomic knowledge and fashion. Presumably heather for plants which like heaths.

There were lots of birds about, at least lots of twittering, but we failed to actually spot anything other than pigeons, crows and magpies. No tweets.

In the margins, a mild infestation of outdoor art in the form of Easter eggs, maybe a meter tall, maybe some kind of brightly enamelled fibre glass.

Some of the many Wellingtonia along the southern fringe of the gardens, below the new lake on the site of which there used to be trial beds for vegetables. See also reference 2.

The base of one of the younger Wellingtonia.

The view across the new lake from one of the two sheds above it. A pleasant spot at which to sit in the sun.

The shed that used to be to the right, below the trial beds, has vanished. How come the heritage faction did not come to lock onto this important example of 1930s garden rustic?

The fine Wellingtonia (and others) to the right of the lake.

Heading back towards the big green house, some striking tulips. The bright colour of which, once again, defeated the telephone. Not that I turned up anything great with Bing or Google. Maybe I should read the instructions for the telephone.

Some of the many snake's head fritillaries we came across - including an albino one, which I have not noticed before.

Bing turns up plenty of white ones, often mixed in with the regulars, while reference 4 talks of cultivated varieties of various colours, including white. 

A light lunch inside at the quiet Glasshouse Kitchen, with most people preferring to eat outside. Chicken Caesar salads, plus Italian fizzy orange for him and fizzy water for her. Entirely satisfactory. A successful partnership between the RHS and the Company of Cooks of reference 5.

And from there a gentle stroll back to the car park. Taking in some of the fine young trees just inside the entrance on the way.

Plus a fancy shrub which BH mistook for a fake in the first instance. Actually a Chinese redbud, aka Cercis chinensis 'Diane'.

With another fancy bit of pruning a little earlier - looking much better in the bright sun than this snap would suggest. An Osmanthus × burkwoodii cross. A least one passer-by knew the first bit, which is more than I could say. Never heard of it.

A fair bit of trolley spotting in the course of the day, including several very close to my own and one from Rollator. I think FIL had one of theirs, very satisfactory, which resulted in me calling these trolleys rollators - which confused some people, not familiar with the brand. Plus plenty of sticks, wheel chairs and so forth. I did not need to feel special.

However, I am now confused myself. I can't find a walker which is branded 'Rollator', although Copilot says it was once a brand name for walkers, at about the time that the walkers you can buy now were invented - but that it has shifted from being a proper noun to a common noun, rather in the way that Hoover once did.

Rather less trainer spotting, but at least one gent. sporting the very same trainers as me. That is to say Merells from Vietnam - at least they were last time that I looked. Not made in the US for a long time. Would you find this out from reference 7?

No nicotine was seen all day, not even out in the car park. Clearly a better class of visitor.

Maybe no pulmonary nicotine, but home to smokies and salads. The gastric variety.

PS 1: OED first edition reserves judgement on heath and heather. The former is an old, German derived word from the midlands, while the latter is Scottish, only coming to name the plants we now call heather in the 18th century. Maybe the second edition would provide more information.

PS 2: having now turned up reference 7, I see just the one FRS. But I still think the sense of the remark above is fair enough, even if I have over egged it a bit.

PS 3: regarding my fizzy orange, I have just put my hand on an empty tin of Sanpellegrino lemonade. The ingredients read: water, lemon juice from concentrate, sugar, carbon dioxide, natural lemon flavourings, natural flavourings, stabiliser and sweetener. This last steviol glycoside, a very sweet substance which we cannot digest from a South American plant called Stevia rebaudiana. Making tinned lemonade is clearly a lot more complicated than you might have thought.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-interchange.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/wellingtonia-121.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericaceae. '... The family is largely composed of plants that can tolerate acidic, infertile, shady conditions. Due to their tolerance of acidic conditions, this plant family is also typical of peat bogs and blanket bogs...'.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritillaria_meleagris.

Reference 5: https://www.companyofcooks.com/partnership/rhs-garden-wisley.

Reference 6: https://www.merrell.com/UK/en_GB/home.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/overdue-visit.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steviol_glycoside.