Butterflies in the Glasshouse at RHS Wisley
and moving into the Alpine House next –
Plenty of treaures in the Alpine House, Fritillaries especially on this visit
Butterflies, first, in the Glasshouse at RHS Wisley – happily I timed my visit on one of the last days of this event (I feared I’d missed it) and was doubly pleased to be able to try out the new macro lens on these beautiful, and mostly still, insects. My time in the tropics was limited only by the heat, as while it was desperately chill outside and had been raining hard, inside it was as you would expect, hot and humid and even more so inside my waterproofs and Driza Bone coat. Still, not to be missed.
The second gallery of images was taken in the Alpine House which sits at the top of the Rock Garden. Alone, I was, and dry and I spent a lovely half an hour getting to know the current crop of specimens on show. Always fresh and something new to see, with an ever changing cast of Alpine characters set in sand-filled benches – which also put them at a more comfortable height at which to photograph them – a little bending down true, but nothing like the contortions required at the Davies Alpine House at Kew; there, I’m often laid out flat on the floor, stretched out to peer at the floor-level specimens.
These last few were picked out from among the woodland landscapes, mostly, bright and perfumed some of them, and in the case of the Hellebore, Anna’s Red, probably my favourite of the hellebores, but then I’ve said this time and again; a star, that Rodney Davey.
The Teddington Gardener 