Today's adventures in the beautiful country of England took us to a more busy and recognizable area on our garden tour trip. We began our day in Oxford. Our first destination for the day was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, which is the oldest botanic garden in Britain founded in 1621.Due to our tight, yet flexible itinerary for this day, we were only allotted an hour to stroll through Britain's oldest botanic garden. Despite the short time spent in this garden, the garden exhibited a beautiful, historic garden design. Several greenhouses that contained a plethora of plant material were also on the garden site; each greenhouse possessed a theme that exhibited exotics, tropical, native, or arid plant materials.
One of the best features about this garden, in my opinion, is that all of the plants are labeled throughout the gardens and greenhouses; hence the word "botanic" in the name of the garden. Many of the gardens we toured prior to Oxford Botanic were not botanical gardens; thus, these gardens contain none to very little plant information or plant labels. After viewing new and unfamiliar plant material the previous couple of days, it was nice to finally figure out the names of the plants we saw in the previous gardens we toured on this trip.
Oxford Botanic encompasses approximately 4.5 acres and is nestled in
the city of Oxford. Despite it's size, the garden illustrates and exhibits over 5,000 different species of beautiful plant material in a garden designed in a classic and historic English manner. The garden design exhibits a formal, yet wild-like, natural placement of plants within planting beds, which gives the garden a relaxed but proper English feel. Out of all of the gardens I toured on this once in a lifetime trip, Oxford Botanic Garden was definitely one of my most favorite gardens. I really liked how this garden displayed a landscape design that effectively utilizes a small space in such a way that makes the 4.5 acre garden look spacious and larger than it is. I was also thrilled to finally being able to figure out and identify the new and unusual plant material I kept seeing within previously toured gardens while on our trip. Check out the link to Oxford Botanic for more information on this historically fabulous garden, and don't forget to take a look at photographs below to get an inside look on a few things I saw during my tour of the garden!
http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/
After we left Oxford Botanical, our next destination for the day was the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley. That's right, a ROYAL botanical garden! Neat, right?After Black Beauty (Hanna, Jeremiah, and my van) and the Silver Queen (Kira's van) drove for about forty-five minutes from Oxford to Wisley, we arrived at the royal botanical garden around 3 PM. Once we paid our entrance fees at the admissions area, we picked up our garden maps and scattered like who knows what to conquer and see as much as we could in this rather large, lovely garden.
The Wisley garden contains quite an extensive collection of themed gardens. Some of the most interesting and breath taking gardens I viewed include: the rock garden, which was THE best rock garden I had ever seen before, the bonsai walk (really neat) and the herb garden. There are many other beautiful rooms, walks, and greenhouses in this garden, of course, but the rooms and areas I mentioned were particularly memorable for me. For more information on the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley, see the link below.http://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley
Once we left the beautiful Wisley garden, the crew set off for our last destination, London, England! After about an hour or so of a drive, Black Beauty and Silver Queen pulled up in front of The Millenia, our gorgeous hotel and home for the next three nights. We hustled ourselves and our luggage out of the vans and into the hotel lobby so our leaders could park the cars while we students proceeded to check into our hotel rooms and put our luggage away. Once we checked into our rooms and freshened up a bit, we met the study abroad students in the hotel lobby. We then caravan-ed a short distance down the street from the hotel to a restaurant called, Wild Wood, where we had a nice group dinner. After dinner, we had our traditional counsel meeting before bed to discuss the next day's plans; then we went off to bed!
That concludes our day's memorable adventures in a nut shell, folks! Stay tuned for more news about our amazing and once-in-a-lifetime garden tour trip in London. Thank you for reading and checking in.
Cheers!
-Hilary
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