RHS Wisley

Gavin and I planned to go to the garden centre at RHS Wisley today to buy replacement plants for all those that died in the winter frosts. While we had a very mild winter, we did have two occasions of a very cold hoar frost that killed off many plants in our garden. The plants from Wisley are a bit more expensive than our local garden centre but the quality is so much better and the plants do well, so in the long run it is more economical to buy from there as the plants last.

We firstly had a quick walk around the gardens. The blossoms are almost over, most of the daffodils are over, but the tulips are starting to open. This is a selection of some of the flowers in their gardens.

The staff member at the Wisley garden shop said they too lost so many plants this winter, in one section of the gardens they lost 80% of their plants. Wisley often records the hottest temperatures in summer, and while it is often warmer than other places in winter, it is in a frost belt so was badly affected. We live nearby so we suffered similarly. It's very dry and hot in summer, and in winter it is mild, but we get significant frosts. We lost two large bottle brush plants, but they did not have any for us to replace them, and given that they don't tolerate frost very well we replaced them with something else, and much smaller too as the large shrubs were very pricey. There was a beautiful large Acer for nearly £1000! We came away having spent less than we expected, which was good. However when we got home and Gavin started planting, we realised that we have also lost two other large shrubs that we did not realise,  so we need to go back to get more. The staff member said that with climate change the British plants cannot tolerate the cold temperatures so it will be a struggle every winter to see what survives in the garden. I think we may need to start wrapping plants in hessian although it looks so ugly.

Gavin will be tired after all that planting tonight, so it will be a quiet evening at home. I finished watching The Night Agent on Netflix, it was very exciting and I enjoyed it (although not always believable).