Bringing The Glasshouse to life

The RHS has built a new world-class Glasshouse at RHS Garden Wisley - developed in celebration of the RHS Bicentenary. The Glasshouse marks a new chapter in horticultural excellence with life-long learning at its heart.

View the internal layout and planting

View the external landscaping

• The huge cathedral-like glass structure covers an area equal in size to 10 tennis courts and rises to 12m (40ft) in height. It has three climatic zones, recreating tropical, moist temperate and dry temperate habitats.

• The Glasshouse provides significant improvements to showcase our world class plant collection and an enhanced horticultural experience for everyone who visits. The RHS’s extensive tender plant collection, comprising more than 5,000 taxa is being housed here, including difficult to grow, rare and endangered species, hundreds of orchid species and old cultivars of Solenostemon ( Coleus ) among others.

• A winding pathway leads you past rocky outcrops, waterfalls, still pools and gently sloping gradients, allowing you to see plants in a range of different environments.

• Educational activities are central to the new Glasshouse. Both the Learning Space and the Growing Lab enable visitors to learn more, get hands-on experience and see how professional glasshouse gardeners work.

• Surrounding The Glasshouse is an attractive new lake, which will bring environmental benefits through responsible water use for the whole of Wisley. Molluscs, damselflies, dragonflies and amphibians will all inhabit the lake.

• Entering The Glasshouse is like walking into a jungle - tree ferns, tall palms, lush-leaved creepers and dazzling flower displays give an air of expectation and drama. There are three interlinked zones: dry temperate and moist temperate (adjacent spaces within the main area of the glasshouse), and a tropical zone overlooking the lake at the front. The tropical section is divided from the temperate by a glass partition and a huge, reddish-brown ‘rock’ structure that also provides a range of planting habitats. The material is actually glass-reinforced concrete moulded from natural rock outcrops, and dominates all three zones.

Find out about the design and build