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Chris Kidd January Newsletter 2024

Ventnor Botanic Garden – the New Year’s Day Flower Count 2024  As the last chimes resounded from Big Ben, I downed my last glass of egg nog mixed with port and readied myself for the annual New Year’s Day flower count at Ventnor Botanic Garden.  The count this year,...

November Newsletter – John Curtis

November Newsletter  Kew Symposium on The State of the World's Plants and Fungi 2023 A Race Against Time Our Director, John Curtis, recently attended the three-day symposium at Kew’s Jodrell Laboratory titled, “The State of the World’s Plants and Fungi.” To conserve...

Chris Kidd October Newsletter

October Newsletter  Strange Fruit October 2023 Below is a branch of a Champion Tree at VBG, Cryptocarya alba. It is the tallest in Britain, and is about the same stature here as those in its Chilean homeland. Its natural habitat is in a type of forest where all the...

September Chris Kidd

September Newsletter  Clerodendron bungei is to be found in severalspots in the garden. It can be quite aggressiveand has a scent that is divisive, some say theflowers are sweet, others that the leaves arenauseous. Introduced by Robert Fortune in1844 as a greenhouse...

August Chris Kidd

Aliens at Ventnor They’ve arrived! The aliens are at Ventnor Botanic Garden! A headline grabber that could announce the extraterrestrial arrival of beings to rewrite our knowledge of the Universe. Or, a headline referring to the plants we refer to as aliens, those...

July Plant Fix

July Plant Fix In the Further East area of VBG the spring planted specimens are establishing despite the very dry conditions. The Ventnor soil is unforgiving in the first year of planting, so we support with water during this period. Amongst the rarer plants are some...

The Further East Project

The Far East Collection is now the biggest development at VBG since the Australian and South African Gardens in 2004 and the Arid Garden in 2008. In November 2022 we made room for this project by clearing nineteen Holme Oaks, an invasive, alien climax tree species now...

Fast Forest: What is wild?

The rewilding concept has gained traction in Europe over a period of years as a way of returning high volume biota to a biota depleted environment.  The wording implies a return to a wild state, but the question is: what is the wild? The wild is an interesting...

A Month of Colour, Smell and New Plants

A Month of Colour, Smell... In our car park are a group of plants often commented on at this time of year, they are seedlings of a Coronilla “Brockhill Blue” that grew nearby, planted in 2005. These seedlings are quite different to the original parent plant that has...

Building Bridges and the Legend of the Blue Flower

Building Bridges at VBG   At the western end of our Further East gardens, several examples of bridges can be found with Japanese influence in their design. Over time the bridge below-left, based on the “Genkai” style in Josiah Conder’s Landscape Gardening in...

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Tel: 01983 855397  |  Ventnor Botanic Garden Community Company C.I.C  | Company Number: 07976468 | Registered Address: Undercliff Drive, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, PO38 1UL