Wisley revisited
There are very few things I miss about living in London. One of them, however, is the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley , in Surrey. I used to live about 30 minutes' drive from Wisley, and could nip down there whenever I fancied, either to wander round the gardens looking for inspiration, or to buy stuff at the plant centre or the bookshop, both of which are superb. In the 20 years that I've been visiting, the gardens - and the facilities - have got better and better. There is much more emphasis today on landscape design - Tom Stuart Smith, Robert Myers, Piet Oudolf and Penelope Hobhouse are just a few of the names who have contributed - which means that although Wisley is still very much a show garden designed to cope with thousands of visitors, it has much more of a sense of place and less of the feeling of being a public park full of plant "exhibits". So when my friend Helen said she wanted to go garden visiting and did I fancy Wisley, I said y