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Please check with garden owners or their website to confirm current dates open Opening Days & Times: Open daily: 10am-5pm. CLOSED Christmas Day.
Advance booking essential for group discount
Year 'round
Echium Pinana Cannas
Adult - £7.50
Concession (Senior citizen, registered disabled, student - proof required) - £7.00
Child (aged 6 - 16) - £5
Child under 6 - Free
Family Saver (2 adults and up to 3 children aged 6 -16) - £18
Dogs not permitted in Visitor Centre or Tropical House. Private room hire, weddings, functions. Edulis eatery serving lunches daily from 12pm. Plantation Room cafe serving coffee and cake.
Special Collection of Pseudopanax. Geographical areas of specialisation include; SW Europe, Southern Africa, New Zealand, North & Central Mexico, Western South America, and Southern South America Healing Festival, Ecology Festival, Shakespeare performances, regular acoustic performances, Jazz events
Puya Collection pending
The Royal Hotel Eversley Hotel
The Taverners The Met
The Spyglass Inn, Ventnor The Hambrough, Ventnor
Ventnor Shankin Ryde
Ventnor Botanic Garden lies in the remarkable microclimate at the heart of the famous 'Undercliff.' This unique garden is protected from the cold northerly winds by chalk downs. Indeed, it holds the warmth from its southerly aspect so well that, combined with the moderating influence of the sea, frost is rarely known. When frost does occur it is usually of short duration and not great severity.
With an average rainfall of 28 inches its climate is more akin to the Mediterranean. This enables a wide variety of plants considered
too tender for much of mainland Britain to be grown.The Garden is unrivalled for its collections of subtropical plants grown unprotected out of doors.
The site of the Garden was formerly the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. Founded in 1868 by the inspiration of Dr Arthur Hill Hassall, physician and naturalist, it grew within a decade to be an important institution. For 80 years it was a major factor in the life of Ventnor. With the discovery of antibiotics for tuberculosis the hospital quickly became redundant and soon deteriorated beyond economic repair. It was finally demolished in
1969.
Perhaps most importantly the Garden now is a forward-looking one, managed by Ventnor Botanic Garden CIC. Unlike many botanic gardens it is not associated with any specific academic institution. Neither does it have a deeply entrenched
history of garden design. Therefore free of many of the constraints placed on other gardens there is an exciting opportunity to maximise the advantage offered by the microclimate and topography of the site, to push the boundaries of what can be grown out of doors.
It is important to note that the Friends of the Garden assist the relatively small numbers of staff both financially and by volunteering. Community involvement being paramount to the Garden's success but also a cornerstone of the ethos of the botanic garden.
No garden that is active and developing stands still, and Ventnor Botanic Garden is always different from one year to the next. At Ventnor each area of the Garden is evolving and changing. In our geographically themed areas we aim not simply to show as many plants as possible, but to show them growing in relation to how they would in the wild state, and to adapt the whole landscape to better resemble this. Specific collections under such management wax and ebb but empirical numbers of plants are happily sacrificed if the overall effect is that the garden looks natural.