Just over a year ago I decided to buy a membership for my hubby’s birthday for RHS. This started a love affair with Wisely Gardens, which is really close by and absolutely stunning. Our son calls us old now because we are quite happy to stroll around this magnificent place and often drag him and the 2 girls there for random long walks.

Recently, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, I went back to the gardens with a group of suitably mad people to see what they had done to mark the occasion.

We discovered that there were some amazing bronze statues around the gardens of all the most loved characters. There was a treasure hunt which we didn’t really do properly due to the age and attention span of the adults kids but it was brilliant in any case. Wisley has a great natural play area for the kids so as we had taken a picnic of tarts, we decided this was the perfect place to sit and tuck in.

We were so lucky with weather. I have been so disappointed with the lack of summer this year. Apparently it’s been typically British, but when you have last year to bench mark against, it’s hard not too feel cheated. But today was AWESOME!

After our picnic, we went off and explored the insanely huge glasshouse. This is particularly fantastic for anyone who likes tropical and interesting plants – the place is basically a huge humid jungle! We found Absalom. He looked mighty chilled.

Wisley, like all good family orientated places has a couple of nice restaurants and tea rooms, and we decided to stop off and have a coffee while the kids played hide and seek/you’re it/scream the loudest. It was a good call and totally glorious as we caught the evening sun. It was so nice and we were so chilled by that time, we had no idea that the gardens would be closing soon, but we did start to get a little suspicious once everyone else had disappeared.

We decided it would be prudent to make our way out. As much as I love being outdoors the prospect of camping at Wisley held no appeal at all. The problem came when we accidentally discovered croquet all set up and ready to be played, a life size bronze figure of Alice and the Cheshire Cat up the tree.

We eventually made it out.