psmv6: Pitcher plant

Back to Wisley a week or so ago, another fine day in a run of bad days, weather-wise that is. Got through the shiny new M25/A3 junction without bother, but then got into a big queue as we got off the A3 onto the Wisley slip road. The big queue being a consequence of the number of people going to Wisley and the fact that utility works for the Wisley Acres estate (aka communities) had cut traffic down to one lane. For the communities see reference 1.

The consequence of this was that we were sent to one of the outer car parks, still a grass field, possibly part of the research side of the Wisley operation. But they had spent what looked like a good deal of money converting a large shed into a toilet block - a convenience indeed as the main entrance was now getting on for half an hour away.

On the way to which we passed the interesting looking building above, to which I shall return below.

Curiously, despite the number of visitors, the café at the entrance was not particularly busy when we arrived and BH did not have to queue for long for our tea and rock cakes. This being around 12:15.

Onto the lily pond for our first bench, at some point taking in this unusual version of a weeping Atlas cedar, of Hook Road fame.

This bush looked very like a sage to me, but it was described as a Phlomis grandiflora 'Lloyd's Silver', of the Lamiaceae, which first only rates a skeleton entry in Wikipedia, at reference 2.

We had tried rubbing a leaf between our fingers, which reliably produces smells with most kitchen herbs, but nothing at all. Although, as it turns out today, I was right to the extent that the host family incudes all manner of aromatic plants, including the sages.

The crocuses were more or less over - with the stunning display of our last visit completely gone - but there were plenty of other flowers. Including, for example, this camelia. Not my favourite flower, but it can be showy, as here.

Plus lots of daffodils and hellebores and some magnolias.

Another showy flower, unknown to me and with no label that I could see. Off the cuff, I think I said witch hazel, to be rebuffed by BH. To be fair to her, it does not much like the witch hazel we have in our garden - where they do not do terribly well - or indeed other witch hazels which we came across that same day. However, Google Images sends me to reference 4: Corylopsis spicata of the witch hazel family.

While the dubious, miniature daffodils of our last visit turn out to be Narcissus bulbicodium, aka the hoop petticoat daffodil.

Onto the big glass house for another look at the pitcher plant which caught my eye, but not my camera, last time, for which see reference 5.

The relevant leaves are those above the pitcher, not those below.

Among something of a jumble of plants, but the label for this one might have been 'Nepenthes 'Bill Bailey''. Google Images does not seem very convinced at all, this despite the ventrata images at reference 6 and elsewhere being very red. As indeed are those for Bill Bailey.

The other label was 'Dendrobium chrysanthum', which is a sort of orchid, this was the orchid annex after all, and nothing to do with my pitcher.

So not much further ahead. Maybe these pitcher plants produce hybrids very readily and maybe both form and colour of the pitchers varies a good deal.

Out to see some sort of hawk circling over trees in the distance. A cooperative hawk in the sense that he headed our way, getting quite close enough for us to make out his forked tail, making him a kite. Plus a sort of mewing, with rather more tuneful, rather longer and higher notes than those of the buzzard, with which we are more familiar.

We took lunch in the regular cafeteria, not far from the main entrance, a place we have not used for a bit. I took a sort of sausage stew, a bit thin on sausage but plenty of red pepper and tomato, for around £15. At the time, I thought that this was a bit dear, but I suppose the stew was much what you might get in a High Street restaurant, at much the same price. BH had settled for something more modest, probably more healthy.

One of the Spanish trolleys affected by the attached garden centre, which had strayed into Car Park No.3. From Marsanz of Madrid, for whom see reference 7.

Around the back of what we by then knew was called 'Orchard cottage', complete with two-seater outdoor facilities. A rather institutional look about the place.

According to reference 8:

'... Formerly the Old School House, Orchard Cottage is one of the oldest houses in Wisley village. It was built circa 1860 in Foxwarren Style by Charles Buxton or Frederick Barnes, and is listed for its special architectural/historical interest. Later converted into five separate flats, the property is now being offered to the market...'.

It is also a Grade II listed building. So lots of fun with the heritage people, never mind the considerable expense, if you were the one who has taken it on.

Google is slightly more informative than Bing. With more background at references 9 and 10.

We shall await developments. Or perhaps one should say redevelopments.

PS 1: I have now taken a proper look at reference 10, which provides a lot of interesting material about Foxwarren Park and its first owner, Charles Buxton. In the snap above Foxwarren Park is to the left of the upper orange spot, just across the road from Painshill, while Orchard Cottage is just to the right of the lower orange spot. Wisley Gardens, bottom left. So the cottage was from the same time and place as the big house.

A big house which, according to reference 10:

'... Architects of neo-Tudor buildings of the period generally used Bath stone for the tracery, copings, mouldings, arches and other dressings – stone masons were abundant and well versed in architects’ needs. Buxton broke with this by using ‘specials’ for all the detailing. These are custom-moulded bricks and, though commonly used in the 16th century, would have been far more difficult to obtain by this date, and there is a strong suggestion that they had to be made to order...'

Perhaps what we now call terracotta - of which a good deal is to be seen in grand Victorian buildings in London. And which is what we appear to have at the cottage.

Charles Buxton was mixed up with both Quakers and brewers, and his name lives on outside the Duke of Sussex public house in Waterloo, an establishment where we once took a memorable Christmas lunch. Now gentrified, as can be seen at reference 11.

It also lives on in what reference 10 describes as a best-seller, his 1848 memoir of his father, a prominent abolitionist, snapped above from the Internet Archive.

It must have done pretty well, with Abebooks selling the original for several hundred pounds, and a variety of reprints since at much more modest prices.

PS 2: Foxwarren Park makes the cut in the Surrey Pevsner, as do the old buildings at Wisley Gardens (described as a pale imitation of Lutyens), but Orchard Cottage does not. I might add that the paintings at Chaldon, noticed very recently at reference 12, make the front cover. And that there is a fountain in the Victoria Tower Gardens - very near Smith Square - to be followed up.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/blue-crocus-day.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlomis_grandiflora.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamiaceae.

Reference 4: https://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/the-garden/plant-list/corylopsis-spicata/.

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/fake-194.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_%C3%97_ventrata.

Reference 7: https://marsanz.es/en/products/.

Reference 8: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/166597715#/?channel=RES_BUY.

Reference 9: https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/buxton/1.html.

Reference 10: https://lesseminentvictorians.com/2020/12/20/the-gothic-horrors-of-a-victorian-worthy-charles-buxton-and-foxwarren/.

Reference 11: https://www.thechaptercollection.co.uk/duke-of-sussex-waterloo.