Chelsea Brighton
May, 2006
 

We leave Sussex May 21st and head towards London. On our way we stop for a visit to Wakehurst Place Gardens, also known as Kew in the country (starts with seedbank, ends with Wakehurst Place). Wakehurst Place, in the beautiful High Weald of Sussex, is an outstanding botanic garden and conservation area, managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Wakehurst Place has a mild, friendly climate, a high rainfall and moisture-retentive soils, complementing the conditions at Kew and allowing many important groups of plants, unable to be grown successfully at Kew, to flourish here. In the woodlands, there are trees from the temperate zones of the world. The planting styles range from formal walled gardens by the Mansion, through expansive specimen beds, to waterside and bog gardens. The estate is home to no fewer than four National Collections - hypericums, skimmias, birches and southern beeches. At Wakehurst Place, there is great emphasis on conservation, with the Millennium Seed Bank - the world's most ambitious conservation project, firmly established; with the Loder Valley Nature Reserve embracing three major types of local habitat; woodland, meadowland and wetland; and the Francis Rose Reserve, probably the first nature reserve dedicated to mosses, liverworts, lichens and filmy ferns (Cryptogams) in Europe.

http://www.icangarden.com/Pix/wakehurst.cfm

We continued towards London where we will met our London guide and enjoyed a sightseeing tour of this vibrant and beautiful city. We checked into our hotel, the Rubens at the Palace for the next five nights.

http://www.rubenshotel.com