Re: Chelsea Show and Europe - and North America

Louise,

My favorite gardens in the near London area are (to the south) Wakehust 
Place , (to the west) Wisley, and (to the north) Beth Chatto. To be quite 
honest, I much prefer Wakehust Place to Kew proper. Each deserves a full 
day if not more. Sissinghurst was way too crowded the time that i went... 
you could barely see the garden for all the people. This was despite timed 
tickets. Have not been back on subsequent trips, prefering to revisit 
Wakehurst Place (it is so close)  or go to some that I have not seen.  For 
more, I will have to look at my notes. Most of our garden trips (in the UK) 
are to the west and north.

Hum.. American gardens. In  the South, I would choose: 1) Fairchild Gardens 
in south Florida (Miami). Wonderful design. This is a huge (quite a few 
acres) garden of tropical plants, very well kept. 2) Callaway Gardens in 
Georgia near Atlanta. Lovely large woodland garden (especially good for 
azaleas and hydrangia). I have not been to enough gardens north of there to 
comment fairly ... only brief trips to N. Carolina and Virginia. Contact me 
if you are going to that area and I'll dig out my notes of the dozen or so 
we visited. I would suggest that someone in the area could give you better 
advice. Marge and Debbie were very helpful when we went. Really not much 
west of there until you get to Texas. The problem here in the US is 
distance. Oh,  most large cities have Botanical Gardens (and some are quite 
good) and there are good smaller gardens .. it just takes so much time to 
get to a lot.

Beth Matney <bmatney@mail.alltel.net>
central Arkansas USDA zone 7b

At 11:01 AM 4/14/00, you wrote:
>Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 07:04:07 +0100
>From: "Louise" <louise@the-english-family.freeserve.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Chelsea Show and Europe - and North America
>
>Here in the UK, my favourite garden is Wakehurst Place,
>which is Kew Gardens in the Country.  In the 1960s, Kew
>Gardens ran out of space for all the planting they wanted to
>do, so they looked around for somewhere they could expand
>to, and they were offered by the National Trust Wakehurst
>Place in Sussex.  It's in the most beautiful natural
>setting.  The Elizabethan manor house is at the top of the
>site, with the 200 odd acres falling very steeply from the
>house in quite deep ravines.  The gardens are set out in
>different world plant zones, so for example, you can walk
>through an Asian heath garden, American beech and birch
>woods, a Himalayan glade.  Up nearer the house are
>herbaceous borders in the walled garden, and many newly
>planted perennial beds.  (Much of the new planting is as a
>result of the 1987 storm, when 10,000 trees were lost on the
>estate.) To my way of thinking, it's much better than Kew
>Gardens itself.  It's also the site of the Millennium Seed
>Bank, which is due to open this summer.
>
>Being one of those people who are in Europe who can see
>relatively easily some of these gardens that have been
>mentioned, I would be very interested to know what gardens
>in North America that are open to the public, list members
>find inspirational.  And why they find them an inspiration.
>
>Louise English, Surrey, England

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