Hibiscus day

Following the problems with Sharon reported at the end of reference 1, we thought we ought to pay a visit to Wisley and see if that, or the library there, could throw any light on the matter. As far as I can make out from the archive, our last visit was as long ago as April, noticed at reference 10. I had thought it was much more recent, perhaps in July, certainly in June. I shall probably continue to look.

It was my turn to drive, and I have to admit to my left hand hovering over the absent gear shift for the first few hundred yards. Got better after that. For some reason, I don't have the same issue with my left foot.

Wisley busy when we arrived at around 11:00, and directions inside the car park were not all they might be, but we landed up in a good spot in Row P of Car Park 2, marked by the breast screening van, plus a snap just in case. The beds bordering the car park had been nicely down, with the right amount of low-key colour.

Traditional tea and scone. Snapped above, not for the scone, which is anyway out of focus, but for the curious job the telephone did on the paper plate it came on, looking as if it has been pushed inside out. Scone fine: I am getting quite used to their rather weighty take on fruit scone. And they are fresh despite being weighty.

The water lily ponds behind the big house were in very fine form. And there was a good supply of benches from which to admire them. And to enjoy the warm weather without being roasted.

Underneath the spreading cypress. That is to say a Lawson's cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Glauca').

The fruits of same. Google Images agrees with Lawson's cypress by a majority rather than a unanimous vote. He also tells me that there are various varieties. He trumps my adding 'glauca' to the search by telling me that this comes in varieties too.

A fine display of pink flowers, which BH named, but I no longer remember. I thought a good example of the sort of thing you can do in a big garden which would not work so well in a small garden. Google Images says Cosmos bipinnatus, while Wikipedia (at reference 2) adds garden cosmos and Mexican aster. The flower in Wikipedia at reference 2 seems to agree, with eight ray florets with three teeth on the outer edge. The small disc florets, the flowers proper, are in the middle. 

Bentham & Hooker still talks of the Compositae family (presumably for the complex, composite flowers) rather than the Asteraceae family, only allowing two asters proper. It also talks of bracts where Wikipedia talks of ray florets, and flowers or florets where Wikpedia talks of disc florets. I dare say much ink has been spilt on all this.

A typical aster flower from Wikipedia (at reference 3), with five ray florets and around sixteen disc florets. So asters don't stick with eight ray florets. But these ray florets do have the three teeth.

Need to check back with BH.

Little and large from different parts of the garden. Left about two inches across, right about five inches - and attracting a lot of attention - and telephone action. All of  'Hibiscus moscheutos PLANET GRIOTTE ('Tangri') rose mallow' according to the ticket. The plants did not look particularly new, but neither of us remembered seeing it before. But then, it is a very long border, the one that runs up the hill to the decapitated horse. One could easily miss them.

Microsoft's Copilot sticking his nose in top left; much more intrusive in that way than Gemini.

Bing knows all about it and I learn that the flowers only last a few days and are continually renewed. For a while, presumably.

Left, the Rose of Sharon I started with. With six petals too, rather than the regular five. Although to be fair, it rather looks as if one of the originally five petals divided by mistake. A proper five on the right.

A snap of an unusual plant in the sub-tropical section. But I couldn't get a close-up of the showy mature flower to focus properly, one of which is visible middle right. Google Images talks of Thalia dealbata, which looks fair enough except this one is not growing in water, just near water.

One yellow, one red. The yellow one was last spotted in Brading in July and noticed at reference 4, there described as a lily. Telephone in even better form on this occasion, bringing out the two whorls of three petals nicely. Google Images says tiger flower (Tigridia pavonia). For which Wikipedia allows one common name including 'lily', but it is presently an iris, irises having been moved out of the lily department, as explained at reference 5. The gene people have been busy.

A stray Rose of Sharon left, a proper purple one with five petals, and a spot of phyllotaxis right, from the alpine house. Spot the spirals. Google Images says sempervivums and there is an enthusiast for them, aka house leeks, at reference 6.

The gardens were impressively free of litter - and there were very few litter bins either - but we did come across this bit, looking to be something to do with insect control, probably dropped by one of the gardeners.

Bing did not turn up that particular packet, but it did turn up the one above, from the people at reference 7. I think the idea is that your pupae hatch into wasp-like hoverflies which eat pests like blackfly. Perhaps the packet was supposed to be discretely tucked behind something or other.

Part 1 of my lunch at the Glasshouse Café, by the big glass house. The telephone managed rather better with this plate than with the identical one underneath the scone, snapped above. Maybe I will get around to working out why.

Part 2, which did better than might be supposed from this snap. We like the place and the offering, but I find I need two items to make up a decent lunch. A Company of Cooks operation, people to be found at reference 8. While the first litter bin of the day was to be found outside.

After which I left BH at the bottom of the hill, on a bench by a water garden, while I clambered up the hill to the library. Managing to stumble on the way and, for the first time ever, deploying my stick to prevent a fall. At least I was quick enough so to do.

Outdoor art - much better than some of the stuff on offer - at the top of hill. This despite being superficially the same shape as the nearby decapitated horse. I wondered whether the artist had cheated - perhaps citing health and safety - by including a steel rod up the middle.

Into the library to investigate the size of ivy leaves, something else, along with the number of petals of a Rose of Sharon, that I worry about. The library is more gardening and plant collecting than scientific botany, at least as far as I could see, but I did take out a couple of books about ivy and did take some pictures from an old book about ivy, which included a section on large-leaved ivies and which turned out to be the well-known and long-lived reference 9, available from the Internet Archive, from which the snap above is taken. But my present impression therefrom is that there are some ivies which have large leaves - which does not help me much with why the leaves of any one clump of ivy can vary hugely in size. But I have learned that ivies have a juvenile and an adult form, with the leaves of the latter being much less interesting and decorative than those of the former - ivy being a very popular ornamental a hundred years ago. While the adult form flowers and fruits - usually late in the season, which is handy for feeders. Further report in due course.

An excellent facility, but I continue to wonder about the long-term future of libraries such as this. Hard to see the considerable expense being justified, given the way that the world has moved on, with so much stuff available from home, over the Internet. How many people still like real books? How many of their real books have the RHS sold or auctioned off? I think the Treasury, when it downsized its once considerable library, I think shared with the Cabinet Office, sent the books off to a dealer who sent the valuable ones on to auction. A dealer no doubt chosen by full, fair and open competition, in accordance with the public procurement regulations. I dare say something of the same sort had happened at the Home Office, where I imagine that the library was a shadow of its former self by the time that I got there. How many PLCs still run to full-on, walk-in libraries with book stacks and chartered librarians?

The café next door to the present library was rather similar in format to that we had used earlier, but rather busier and the offering might be described as more mainstream. I dare say we will give it a go one day.

Meanwhile, BH had been admiring the very handsome water lilies in her water garden. Sadly, the telephone did not do a very good job on them. There were also some large fish, not necessarily in the same pond.

A clump of not very healthy looking Norway Spruce, up against the south wall of a small walled garden. Aka Picea abies 'Cincinnata'. Plenty of it on the Internet, from which I learn that it might grow to anything between 10m and 40m. Unusual to see sick plants at Wisley. 

Possibly the same plants snapped just over ten years ago on Flickr, when they were a good deal smaller. The impressive looking Dawes Arboretum in Ohio, of reference 11, has them too.

We had seen red versions of this flower both at Puckpool and at Ryde. Google Images reminds me that it is a variety of  the trumpet vine (Campsis radicans). Finding which is left as an exercise for the reader.

And to close, a No.38 on exit. The next best thing to the elusive No.39. We also snagged a No.48.

Two driving errors on the way out of Wisley, where joining the fast moving traffic on the busy A3 can be tricky, but at least I did not earn a honk or a hoot.

A fine day out, a little longer than usual, with the gardens in fine form. We are lucky to have such a place so near to hand.

PS 1: something has gone wrong with the vertical spacing in edit mode. We shall see how it looks posted. Something which used to happen quite often in the past, with Gemini once telling me that it was some hangover from an earlier edition of the template.

PS 2: BH now explains that she had at first thought crocosmia (originally a sort of South African iris), then realised that that was not right. Not that far off the alphabetic mark though. While I hadn't got a clue.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-933-934-935-and-936.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_bipinnatus.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteraceae.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/two-visits.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridaceae.

Reference 6: https://sempervivumsbypost.co.uk/collections/sempervivums-or-houseleeks-for-sale.

Reference 7: https://royalbrinkman.com/. From the Netherlands, with lots of branches, including the UK and Russia.

Reference 8: https://www.companyofcooks.com.

Reference 9: Ivy - Shirley Hibberd - 1872. To be found at https://archive.org/details/ivymonograph00hibbrich/page/96/mode/2up.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/pointed-bridges.html.

Reference 11: https://www.dawesarb.org/.