Wisley Garden Library aims to enrich visitors’ knowledge and enjoyment of the garden. Its collections cover practical gardening, garden design, construction and planting, and garden history.
The Wisley Science Library
The Science Library is an important research collection available to visitors by appointment. These collections support and reflect the scientific work of the RHS.
Subjects include:
- Botany
- Horticultural taxonomy
- Floras
- Cultivated plant monographs
- Entomology
- Soil science
- Plant pathology
Science Library journals include specialist academic titles, and an excellent collection of specialist plant newsletters, from the UK and overseas.
Garden history
We have a great collection of books on garden planting in the past - ideal if you’re planning to recreate a period garden. Plant histories and biographies of plant hunters chart the discovery and introduction of the plants we grow today. Research the social history of gardening with books on kitchen gardens at the large country houses and the garden staff who worked in them.
The journals Garden History Journal, Heritage News and Plant Heritage feature contemporary research into our gardening heritage. Historical journals - including Gardeners’ Chronicle, Gardeners’ Magazine, and Garden – are key primary sources for garden history research.
Garden design
This includes books to help you make the best of your site and soil and find plants suited to shady or dry gardens, chalk soils or even coastal gardening. Plus there are books on plant combinations and colour in the garden for planting schemes with impact.
Browse the best books on gardening styles to inspire your own - whether you want a Mediterranean garden, cottage garden, formal garden or something very different.
Journals like Gardens Illustrated, Garden Design Journal, and The Garden feature contemporary design. Historical journals, such as Gardeners’ Chronicle and William Robinson’s The Garden, give you details of design inspiration and philosophy from the past.