The House and Gardens of Wakehurst Place, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

Pictured is the main mansion at Wakehurst Place, this used to house the millennium Seed Bank, now it functions as an activity centre. Wakehurst, managed by Kew but owned by the National Trust is the most visited trust garden in England.

As you have no doubt realized I have been a little lapse in updating the blog. As with most students I have experienced the intensity of the end of term. Classes finished for most this past week, however since we are out of alignment we still have another week to go with a substantial lab report to submit and an oral presentation on Monday.

I have spent the past couple of Saturdays in the lab working on transforming the resurrection plant Craterostigma plantagineuum with Agrobacterium tumefaciens. I conclude this experiment in two weeks by handing the cultured plants with the transferred genes off to the researchers at the University of York. I think the experiment has been a success with many plants hopefully carrying the transferred genes: York will have to authenticate this through PCR (My students should know all about this since I have been posting all my lab reports and essays online, if anyone else is interested I can send them to you but they are much too long and boring for most to post here).

I am putting the blog up in two to three sections, this posting will show pictures of the gardens at Wakehurst Place. Wakehurst is home to the Millennium Seed Bank and is the main arboretum for Kew proper which is about 60km away. We spent the week of November 27th staying at the seed bank and so I had some time in the morning to walk the grounds and take a few pictures, it is getting cold here at times as that is frost you see on the lawns.

For those that have a good memory, there is a picture of the Red Border at Wakehurst in my house (Adam and Anita can show you if you drop by) in the hallway outside the downstairs bathroom. That picture was taken on our NPC field trip in 1986 with the infamous Tom Laviolette; it has only taken me 20 years to return.
Below is the famous Red Border today, obviously not in full form but alas it is November, however it still looks good to me.

It is hard to believe that the Rhododendrons are flowering in November, but many are along with Mahonia, Bergenia and the occasionall Viburnum, I understood it snowed yesterday, while I walked along the beach eating a Cornish Pasty, I know some of you will make me pay for rubbing it in.

Wakhurst Place is essentially a woodland garden with deep valleys where the stream dissectss the gardens. This terminates in a resivoir at the bottom of the 600 acre estate and the Lode Valley. In 1987 a hurricane swept across southern England and devastated many gardens by toppling large trees. Wakehurst was severelyy hit but today there is little evidence of the devastation.

http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/visitor/visitwp.html

Several have asked for my address here in England, here it is: 73 Holingbury Park Avenue, Brighton, BN1 7JQ, United Kingdom.