“A garden to which Fellows may come to solve their individual gardening problems”

Today, RHS Wisley is one of the UK's best-loved gardens and attracts over one million visitors per year. It is hard to believe that the flagship garden of the RHS only started admitting members of the public 30 years after it first opened.

When the RHS decided that it needed a new garden away from the pollution of the London suburbs, Wisley and its beautiful Surrey surroundings seemed the perfect solution.

However, when the new garden opened in 1904, the focus was less on visitors and more on creating an exceptional experimental garden for Fellows and a leading horticultural training school. A year on, the new RHS Garden welcomed a modest 5,250 visitors.

By the late 1920s, visitor numbers had climbed to an impressive 50,000 even though the garden was still only open to Fellows and their guests. In 1934, RHS Wisley finally opened its gates to the general public and it never looked back.

“Big shops out of little kiosks can grow”

Meet Peggy Groom – one of many RHS employees who helped to transform Wisley into a welcoming visitor destination.

As a child, Peggy lived with her parents in a flat in Wisley's Old Laboratory. Her father was the garden caretaker while her mother ran a small kiosk at the garden entrance selling RHS booklets and postcards. Peggy helped out during the holidays and took over the kiosk when her father died.

With Peggy at the helm, the kiosk went from strength to strength. She expanded its product range to include china and corn dollies, which sold so well that the kiosk had to be replaced, first by a larger kiosk and then by a gift shop and information centre in 1975.

There were no toilets in the gift shop and, in Peggy’s words: “an ability to sprint was an advantage!”

The new shop was soon outgrown and, in 1979, it was replaced by a much larger garden centre, this time with staff (and visitor!) toilets.

In just 20 years, Wisley visitor numbers had more than doubled from 150,000 in 1957 to 400,000 in 1978.

“Finding peace in the garden”

Over the past 30 years, the creation of RHS Gardens in different parts of the country has been an important way of reaching new visitors and new communities.

RHS Rosemoor in Devon opened in 1990, followed by RHS Hyde Hall in Essex in 1993. In 2001, the RHS merged with the Northern Horticultural Society and acquired Harlow Carr gardens near Harrogate. Finally, in 2021, after 3 years of restoration work and the planting of 260,000 new plants, RHS Bridgewater opened on the site of New Worsley Hall in Greater Manchester.

Alongside RHS staff, a dedicated body of volunteers play an important role in making all five RHS Gardens so memorable for their visitors. They often stay on for many years, forming a strong bond with the garden and fellow volunteers.

At Harlow Carr, two Ukrainian volunteers made a particular mark on the early history of the Garden. Vasily (known as Basil) Petruszcak and Jan (known as Johnnie) Ulman had become friends during the Second World War after they were captured and imprisoned together in a German POW camp. After the War, Basil and Johnnie moved to the UK and became next-door neighbours in Harrogate, where they started volunteering for the Northern Horticultural Society in 1951.

Over many years, they helped to transform “70 acres of rough meadow and unkempt, overgrown woodland” into the beautiful gardens, which later became RHS Harlow Carr. Basil continued volunteering until well into the 1990s.

Today's RHS volunteers continue in the spirit of Basil and Johnnie, working tirelessly to keep the Gardens as beautiful and as welcoming as possible. Because the RHS wouldn't be the RHS without its Gardens – or indeed its visitors.