Wisley in Winter

It’s not really a botanic garden, but the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens at Wisley is near enough as makes no difference. We visited in what should have been the dead of winter, but which in reality was this weird sprautumn mash-up that is now December in the UK. The heather garden was particularly pretty, despite the wind:

At £12, the entry price is a bit steep: even Kew does reduced rates when most of the plants are underground, sleeping off the summer’s excesses.

Botanerd highlights included the biggest pine-cone I have yet added to my collection (yes, it is a collection, not a sickness)…

…and the – apparently legal – purchase of class A drugs from the attached garden centre:

From what I gather, owning a peyote cactus is legal in the UK unless you ‘prepare it for consumption’, which magically transforms it into a 7 year jail term. This presumably includes accidentally letting it die and dry out into a button whilst on holiday. I may be having a teesy bit of buyers’ regret.