A major part of the project was always settling the Glasshouse and the Clore Learning Centre into Wisley’s much-loved landscape. Renowned landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith came up with a typically elegant, understated solution.
He has reflected the curving form of the structure into its surroundings with a gentle ripple of interwoven crescents, connecting them to each other and to the familiar surroundings of Wisley - from Fruit Mount to Alpine Meadow. It will be about five years before the full garden structure becomes apparent.
The main pattern or geometry begins at the Glasshouse entrance, from where, Tom says, a series of parallel paths gradually curve and intersect to create a pattern of planting beds and lawns that begin as simple rectangles and then develop into a series of interlocking sickle shapes.
Each compartment has a consistent planting character. Over this basic geometry is laid a circumferential pattern of clipped beech hedging, starting as a series of tall columns outside the entrance and then coalescing into low, sweeping curves.