Travel Stories: English Gardens Tour (11)

(This is the 11th in a series of blog posts about the English Gardens Tour I led from May 16-27, 2018. Remember that you can click on any of the photos in order to view a larger image.) Up today: Chelsea Physic Garden.

On May 25th, our group visited the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. What? You’ve never heard of it? Well, would you believe it’s one of the oldest botanical gardens in England?

The Chelsea Physic Garden should be part of every English Gardens Tour!

Established as the Apothecaries’ Garden in 1673, the purpose was to train apprentices how to use plants for medicinal purposes. They have a living collection of over 5,000 plants and it’s quite a lovely and fascinating garden to wander through.

This was my husband’s and my second time to the garden. At our first visit, we had a delightful guide who explained what we would be seeing and how plants were used. This time, there wasn’t a guide, but most plants are labeled and some even have signs that explain their significance, so we were able to get a good feel for what we were seeing. This was a highlight of our English Gardens Tour!

There is also quite a nice shop and a small cafe on the grounds.

First, here are some of different aspects of the garden that I took during our visit, which I’ll follow with some of the cool plants that caught my eye:

   

   

There were gardeners working on some of the beds so we had the opportunity to chat with them and ask questions as well. You can see some of them working in the photo to the above right.

This photo illustrates one of the natural plant supports they use in the garden. In this case, it was providing support to rosemary plants.

And now for some of the plants I saw that I’d really like to add to my garden!

   

Above left: Centaurea woronowii. Above right: Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’.

   

Wallflower, above left (Erisymum, possibly ‘Winter Sorbet’). Above right: Lathyrus clymenum (not certain, no tags, no one able to identify for me)

Above: This is a stunning Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diablo D’or’).