Wisley Gardens



Our day today began as many often do, with coffee. It still confuses us when we go to order a coffee and our barista asks us…”You mean an Americano?”


Our Site today was Wisley garden, a horticultural marvel. Susan said it well, I want to be buried here. Wisley is literally the most beautiful garden I have ever gone to. We didn’t have an organized tour which was rather nice, as we were able to wander about the gardens and enjoy the architecture of the plants.


They had a wonderful formal English garden that showcased the importance of designing a garden from more than one prospective. The use of several colours and textures of bricks reflects the importance of hardscape design.


 In addition the Use of both water and hardscape features along with deep and lighter colours to make specific ornamentals pop was evident.
A rather large rainforest/desert conservatory was a splendid addition, allowing for diversity of plants that could not be grown in a temperate climate. Cheyenne got to see some cactuses, which is always a fun thing to watch. Their orchid selection in this glass house was also quite lovely.




They also had an alpine exhibit which showed how pioneer plants exist on mountain sides and break down rocks. Many of the plants were sharp, short, and tough. This is because they are adapted to a cold and rocky climate.


We have had the opportunity to show off our MSU pride nearly every day. This is our classroom.



After our classroom time was over we went to the Platform 9&¾. We waited for an hour but we got some sweet pictures out of it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gilfresh and the AFBI

Image
Our last day was the most jam packed in terms of diversity. We started our day at a food processing facility. Gilfresh is a midsized vegetable processer that moves a lot of the produce in Northern Ireland. We learned a bit about how Northern Ireland is an extremely small territory, the entire Irish peninsula is smaller than the state of Michigan. Northern Ireland also has a very small horticulture industry, a majority of their agriculture is dedicated to forage grass for sheep. We got to tour their facilities and see how carrots straight from the earth are made into cubes for soup. we were not able to take pictures in the facility. We then headed to the AFBI research station for a cider tasting. These are the various ciders we tried, sweetness is an important factor in determining taste in cider. We toured an orchard and saw the differences in how Michigan apples and Irish apples are produced, they don’t need irrigation and their density is much lower.   Th...
Read more

Modern Use of Plants and Traditional Versus odern Horticulture Plant production

Image
In last week’s class we learned about how agriculture has changed since the invention of “modern agriculture”. In post last week we saw the ancient history of agriculture, the invention of the wheel so to speak. In this week’s post we see a huge event that changes the world forever, WW1. During world war one we saw companies creating chemicals for use in clearing brush as well as chemical warfare, and when these chemicals were outlawed by the Geneva Convention the companies had to look for new markets. Agriculture. With small adaptations to the structure of the molecules we could take something like nerve gas and turn it into a new organophosphate and use it on insects. As a society we also invented the Haber-Bosch process creating artificial ammonia which we could use as a fertilizer. Norman Borlaug came on the scene in agriculture and the green revolution took off, using the chemicals for a purpose of feeding the world. Good intentions do not always work out in your fav...
Read more

History of Horticulture

Image
This last week we covered the history of horticulture. Considering agriculture and horticulture are so intertwined our story begins at the dawn of agriculture 12-8 thousand years ago, when we first domesticated wheat. There isn't much written record of ancient history until we get to the Egyptians, who through the use of Hieroglyphics and paintings have one of the most detailed record keeping styles of the modern world. Their largest use of horticulture was for the production of wine, (alcohol goes way back?!). However we also see elaborate garden design for the very wealth Egyptians personal use. When we look at the next two big empires we see that the Greeks and Romans contributed to horticulture by their brilliance and their implementation. The Greeks made tremendous strides in medicine and botany and the Romans implemented the techniques of crop rotation and nutrient addition as well as “high density systems”. With the dark ages we see not a halt in agriculture o...
Read more