11 clever ideas from RHS Wisley – one of the UK’s greatest gardens
RHS Wisley is one of the most important gardens in the UK. It’s the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society, the gardening charity.
With over 25 different garden areas, each with its own character, there is planting inspiration for a range of tastes. You can go from the contemporary naturalistic Oudolf Landscape to the traditional Cottage Garden or the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden, via the Alpine Garden and many more.
This is also the home of their scientific research and one of the main places they hold trials to find the best plants. The new RHS Recommended AGM label means that plants have been grown and tested over several years and in various locations around Britain to find out which varieties work best in domestic gardens.
The Cottage Garden at RHS Wisley, with its rose arches and pretty plant combinations
But, for the past few years, it’s been frustratingly hard to reach, with major M25 roadworks jamming up access. But now they have ended!
Although the garden has been open throughout the roadworks, there’s a sense of renewal with knock-your-socks-off displays and a feeling of celebration in the air. It has, of course, the vistas and scale of a large garden, but each individual garden area, border or corner has smaller, practical details to take home.
Note that there is a new access road to RHS Wisley and your satnav may not update, so pay attention to signage if you haven’t visited for a while!
Here are 11 ideas worth taking home to try in your own garden.
Revisit overlooked classics such as lilac
Lilac is an old cottage garden favourite with scent, presence and seasonal drama. It works beautifully in both traditional and more contemporary settings. But it has been somewhat forgotten about in today’s perennial-based gardens.
There are dozens of different varieties of lilac in the RHS Wisley Cottage Garden, ranging in colour from deep red to – well – lilac and white.
It’s worth reconsidering some of those plants you associate with older gardens. Many are tougher and more useful than we remember.
The deep red lilac Syringa vulgaris Charles Joly next to an obelisk. The obelisk has a rose just coming into leaf and in a few weeks, the rose will flower, taking over from the lilac. I saw roses partnered with lilacs in this way all round the Cottage Garden.
Discover more charming classics in 8 easy-care but forgotten shrubs from Hever Castle Gardens.
Shape your shrubs the RHS Wisley way…
Shrubs are the backbone of a good garden, but so many of us grew up with lumpen and mis-shapen shrubs hunched at the backs of borders. As a result, people started to think they didn’t like shrubs.
But once you look at a beautifully pruned shrub, like the lilacs at RHS Wisley, you realise that the right shrub, pruned properly, is a joy to behold.
The lilacs in the cottage garden were mainly pruned as if they were multi-stem trees, with graceful branches arching out, tipped with fragrant flowers.
Beautifully pruned lilac with bare stems and an airy shape. This lets light through, so that shade loving ground cover can be planted for summer and sun loving bulbs in the winter when the leaves are off. And it’s a beautiful shape to look at.
The lower branches were mainly clear, offering light and space around the shrub to grow bulbs. Shrubs like lilacs lose their leaves from autumn to spring, which means there is plenty of light for sun-lovers like tulips. And by the time the leaves are back on, the bulb foliage will have died back.
Not every shrub will benefit from being pruned like this, but it’s a lesson on how pruning is more than just cutting off the flowers and removing dead wood. It is something worth considering carefully.
See Improve Your Pruning With 10 Great Dixter Tips.
For hydrangeas, see The Really Easy Way to Prune Hydrangeas
But some shrubs work best clipped…
The best shrub for clipping into shapes is box. But box blight and box moth caterpillar have devastated swathes of box all over the world.
In the walled garden at RHS Wisley, there is a selection of clipped shrubs being trialled as alternatives to box.
At the beginning of the box crisis, many people thought Ilex crenata (Japanese holly) would be a good alternative. But the RHS say that its performance has been disappointing and I agree.
So far, evergreen honeysuckle, privet, yew and podocarpus seem like good alternatives although the RHS says that no shrub has yet proved a complete substitute for box.
Alternatives to box in the Walled Garden at RHS Wisley. The vivid red shrub is Berberis ‘Orange Rocket’.
So it’s useful to see the alternatives together in a knot garden.
Note that like all clipped shrubs, they won’t necessarily look tightly clipped all the time. Some will need clipping more often than others.
See The 3 best alternatives to box for simple topiary and What is a blobbery? And why your garden needs balls, clouds and lollipops for more about shrubs that can be clipped into shape.
Don’t be afraid to shock – dramatic colour combinations can be uplifting
RHS Wisley isn’t shy about colour. Dramatic colour combinations aren’t for everyone, but it’s worth looking at clashing colour in someone else’s garden. The massed tulips around Jellicoe’s Canal are are a reminder that contrast can create energy.
The ducks are enjoying the blast of colour from the tulips. Varieties include: Tulips Abba, Escape, Foxtrot, Jan van Nes, Jimmy, Mistress, Monte Carlo, Negrita, Negrita Double and Orange Emperor.
See here for more about how to plant and grow tulips for a stunning display.
Use pavers creatively in high traffic areas
Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth trying to keep a lawn going if it’s always being worn away by people’s feet.
But the alternatives are often expensive or unsatisfactory. A lawn allows rainwater to drain away naturally, it absorbs carbon and the soil is full of worms and micro-organisms.
You wouldn’t want to pave the whole area or cover it with gravel.
So I loved this ‘wider than a path’ paving at RHS Wisley. The lawn between the Cottage Garden and the Exotic Garden is trodden by tens of thousands of feet every year.
Adding a range of pavers across a broad area encourages people to tread on the stone and saves the lawn. It’s not perfect (in nature nothing is!). But it’s an attractive and workable option.
More than a path, not quite a terrace. Set across a wide area, these pavers mean that you can retain some of the benefits of a lawn, such as free-draining after rainfall. There is still some wear – but that is hardly surprising.
The secret to controlling wisteria
Almost every English house I ever lived in as a child had wisteria growing up the front.
The flowers are stunning, offering nectar and pollen to pollinators. It is a glorious climber.
But now it’s rare to see wisteria on a house because wisteria is so vigorous that the vines can climb up to the top of the house and drag the guttering down.
It’s not as damaging to the home as many builders suggest. Wisteria roots generally grow down rather than spreading, so they’re unlikely to damage foundations. However, they can penetrate broken or cracked piping so if you already have issues they can make it worse.
At RHS Wisley, they grow wisteria up a garden wall rather than the house wall. You can also grow them up a pergola or arch. And the Wisteria Walk is one of the most famous sights when in flower.
‘Silky Wisteria (Wisteria brachybotris ) Showa Beni trained up a wall. You can enjoy the beauty of wisteria, provided you make sure that the variety is right for your area and you keep it well trained.
The main key is to keep it pruned and trained. Wisteria is fast-growing and will need pruning at least twice a year – once in late winter and once in summer. If you keep it under control, it’s unlikely to cause any damage.
The RHS recommends that you plant wisterias in autumn, winter or spring. It’s best to buy it in spring and to buy a wisteria that is already in flower, so that you know it will flower.
There are different wisterias around the world, so it’s important to find one that is right for where you live. For example, the Asian wisterias from China and Japan are highly invasive in parts of North America.
But there are also wisterias native to North America (Wisteria frutescens). So check the wisteria label and check what is invasive where you are.
See How to choose the best climbing plants for your garden.
Use logs and timber as sculptural features
One of the most charming areas at RHS Wisley is the Wildlife Garden. Most of it is on a very domestic scale with good tips you can use at home.
Arrangements of logs used to add interest to the Wildlife Garden.
In several places there are log piles arranged as focal points or quiet sculptural elements, especially in more naturalistic planting.
If you have dogs, you may have to secure such piles. Our dog, Ozzie, wants to take any logs he finds away for chewing.
Contain wildlife-materials in a structured way
Bug hotels have become fashionable, but some wildlife experts are concerned that they can spread disease and aren’t suitable for all insects.
Leaving a pile of leaves, twigs, logs, straw and cones is more natural and can be changed or replaced more easily.
But not everyone wants a messy pile in the corner of their garden. The solution at RHS Wisley is to stow it inside a sculptural work of art that allows birds, insects and small mammals to access the materials. They can be replaced or cleaned out easily.
This sculpture by Tom Hare would be too big for most gardens, but the idea of hiding nesting and bug hotel materials inside an accessible work of art could be adapted.
Find out more about gardening for biodiversity with the RHS’s Helen Bostock.
Use a mini dead hedge as edging for a path or border
A dead hedge is a nature-friendly way of stacking prunings, twigs and branches between poles. It serves as a natural garden divider, a habitat for wildlife and an eco-friendly way to deal with garden waste.
But dead hedges do take up space, particularly in a smaller or urban garden.
So I loved this idea from RHS Wisley, which uses dead hedge materials but keeps them low, used as edging for a path. It offers the benefits of a dead hedge without taking over the garden.
Mini dead hedge used as garden edging.
Mini dead hedge edging shown up close.
Add a green roof to a shed or outbuilding
A planted roof softens hard structures and adds another layer of planting — particularly valuable in smaller gardens.
You can add a green roof to an established shed, although you’ll need to check whether it can support the weight. And a green roof isn’t suitable for a slope over 25 degrees.
Once set up a green roof needs relatively little care and will mostly look after itself.
This could be a DIY project (there are lots of videos on YouTube) or you could find specialist green roof installers or contractors near you. A sedum green roof will cost less than a wildflower green roof, because sedums need less soil. They’re also lower maintenance.
Your green roof doesn’t have to be grand or full of flowers. It just has to be welcoming to nature like this one on top of the shed in the Wildlife Garden.
Inspiration for plant combinations
Seeing how professional gardeners pair and group plants is always inspiring for us amateurs. RHS Wisley’s plant combinations are really worth noting. Many of the plants are quite common and easily found, but they are put together with great skill.
I visited during tulip time, but you would find lots of ideas for other plant pairings throughout the year.
Both these tulip displays really made me stop and stare. Top show Cercis chinensis with Tulips Night Club, Ronaldo, Red Rover, Candy Prince, Paul Scherer and Mistress Mystic. Photo above shows the tulips in pots outside the entrance at RHS Wisley.
Echoing the structure – the pointed flowers of Ballerina tulips with the candelbra of upright cones from ground cover pine Pinus mugo.
Daffodils with Vinca major variegata – an uplifting combination of yellow, green and white with a few blue highlights. All these are commonly available plants but they look special when put together like this.
There’s more planting inspiration in 5 lessons in planting style from the new Oudolf borders at RHS Wisley.
Other great gardens for inspiration include:
Great Dixter – 7 lessons from Great Dixter – a garden that looks gorgeous and supports wildlife.
West Dean – The Sand Garden – A bold new trend in resilient garden design and
How to Create Stunning Garden Borders – 12 essential tips.
Pin to remember ideas for your garden from RHS Wisley
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