For some reason we started off by strolling up into the apple orchard, several acres of it, with lots of trees, young, old, large, small, mostly in very good condition. I was rather surprised by the amount of fruit still on some of the trees, despite our having had several frosts by then - with my understanding being that frost and apples do not mix. But perhaps I am wrong about that because the one illustrated was called 'winter banana'. I was also surprised that the telephone managed as well as it did with the apples against a very bright sky.
We wondered about what happened to all the apples, apart from falling to the ground - in which connection we thought that running pigs, a traditional orchard animal, to eat them up would probably not be very practical in a place which, we learned later, clocked up around a million visits a year - so four times the operation of nearby Polesden Lacey. The chap selling apples in the greenhouse claimed that the apples were stored and trickled out through the shop over the next month or so - although he did admit to some going for juice. Few of the apples for sale had names that I recognised, so there must be a fair turnover in the varieties of apples for sale, and none of them attracted. We were allowed to sample but that, for some reason, did not attract either, partly because taking a sliver off a knife is not the same a biting into a proper chunk. One would not get much of a sense of texture, with the texture of an apple being important to me.
So from the orchard we swung around to the main greenhouse to make our inspection of the fine succulent and cactus collection there, a personal favourite. Perhaps I am attracted to the rather mathematical arrangement of the leaves.
We also had the apple man mentioned above and a show of apples and vegetables, in horticultural show format. We wondered what the judging points for giant leeks were, not being able to work out why the first prize went to the leek that it did at all.
Plus a rather good display of chrysanthemums, small flowers but lots of them, with each plant offering a hemisphere, perhaps a foot across, of bright colour. Very effective there, but I don't think a single such plant would look that well at home; one would need a conservatory with room for a number of them.
Then a tour around the arboretum.
Then a visit to the library, soon to be demolished to make way for a grand new entrance building, presumably complete with an even larger shop than they have now. Lots of talk of needing new laboratories - to be given a large chunk of land not far from where the alpine house is now - but I think management have really got turnover on the brain; they are going all out to be the biggest visitor attraction in this part of Surrey. And very attractive it is too - for the moment. But I do worry about the direction they are taking.
They are also selling off lots of books from their library. Which I dare say they are a little sad about, but elaborate botanical picture books are largely obsolete in these days of the internet and they need the space.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/strelitzia.html.
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