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Bonsai and poetry at Wisley
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Old Almondburian’s poem is selected to mark the opening of a new ‘BonsaiWalk’ at Royal Horticultural Society’s 60 acre gardens in Surrey
ISLEY, in Surrey, is the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society. The original garden was the creation of George Fergusson Wilson – businessman, scientist, inventor and keen gardener and a former treasurer of the RHS. After Wilson’s death in 1902, the garden and the adjoining Glebe Farm
were bought by Sir Thomas Hanbury, a wealthy Quaker who had founded the celebrated garden of La Mortola, on the Italian Riviera. In 1903, SirThomas presented the Wisley estate in trust to the Society for its perpetual use. Last year,Wisley opened its latest addition: the Herons Bonsai Walk, an impressive avenue of beautiful, hardy bonsai trees. Old Almondburian David Morphet (1951-58) was invited to read his poem Bonsai atWisley from the collection The Silence of Green.The President of the RHS Elizabeth Banks and its Director General Sue Biggs were both there and they came up with the idea of displaying the poem at the Walk. “No one who has visited the RHS flagship Garden atWisley over the past five or six years can fail to have been
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