Chelsea Physic Garden
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Address Background Personnel Policies Environment Weather Collection Facilities Access Principles Location map
| Address and contact details | |
| Name of Garden: | Chelsea Physic Garden |
| 66 Hospital Road, London, SW3 4HS | |
| Tel: 0171352 5646 | |
| Fax: 0171 3763910 | |
| Email: sue@cpgarden.demon.co.uk | |
| Web site: | |
| Latitude: 51° 29' 00" N / 51.4843102 | |
| Longitude: 0° 9' 44" E / -0.1633523 | |
| (mapquest.com provides an excellent way of checking how accurate your co-ordinates are) | |
| Background to the collection | |
| Year founded: | 1673 |
| Ownership: | Chelsea Physic Garden Company |
| Garden code: | CHEL |
| Umbrella organisation: | PlantNetwork, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens |
| i.e. PlantNet, BGCI, NCCPG; ICCP etc. | |
| Personnel | |
| Please include actual titles in brackets after the name i.e. Owner, Director/Manager, Curator/Head gardener. If you have other administrative staff, i.e. taxonomists, education officers etc. please add extra rows. | |
| Head Gardener: | Fiona Crumley |
| Curator: | |
| Contact person:: | |
| Total Staff: | 65 (7 full-time, 3 part-time, the rest are volunteers) |
| Total Horticultural Staff: | |
| Policies | |
| Accessions: | To accession plant material which will (i) augment the Historic Walk with species linked to the curators and associates of the Garden with a current focus on Lindley and Fortune; (ii) augment the medicinal plant collections with species known or suspected of biological activity as well as species used for medicinal purposes; (iii) be only arboreal species that are rare and likely to benefit from our microclimate, or which are medicinal or linked to the Historic Walk; (iv) augment genera in which the Garden has specific research interst, e.g. Cistus, Narcissus, Pelargonium, Dryopteris, Trichomanes, Asplenium and various genera of Macaronesia and Mediterranean Island endemics. Almost entirely accessed by seed from other Botanic Gardens with policy on Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and prior informed consent clauses. |
| Collections: | Preference given to natural-source material with good field notes. |
| Physical environment | |
| Altitude: | 5 m |
| Soil type: | Riverbank alluvium, neutral |
| Aspect: | South and mostly flat |
| Total area: | 1.5 ha |
| Area heated: | 0.1A |
| Other sites of collection: | |
| Weather records | Records are kept |
| Temperature | |
| Average daily: | |
| Av. monthly max: | |
| Av. monthly min: | |
| Absolute maximum: | 25 °C (1997) |
| Absolute minimum: | 1 °C (1997) |
| Wind | |
| Direction: | West |
| Strength: | Below average |
| Rainfall | |
| Average annual: | 478 mm |
| Month of maximum: | June |
| Month of minimum: | March |
| Plant collection | |
| Number of families: | |
| Number of genera: | |
| Number of species: | |
| Taxa: | 5000 |
| Number of accessions: | |
| Number of plants: | |
| Notable plants within the collection: | |
| Largest grapefruit tree and olive tree outside in British Isles. | |
| Geographical area(s) of specialisation: | |
| Middle Europe, Southwestern Europe, Macaronesia, Southern Africa | |
| Special families within the collections: | |
| Cistaceae, Aspleniaceae, Dryopteridaceae, Geraniaceae, Labiatae | |
| Special genera within the collections: | |
| Cistus, Asplenium, Dryopteris, Pelargonium Trichomanes | |
| Special collections: | |
| Cistus, NCCPG – 69 Species, 110 Taxa. Pelargonium, Natural History Museum Botany Dept. – 110 Species. Asplenium, Natural History Museum Botany Dept. – 2 Species, 830 Taxa. Dryopteris, Natural History Museum Botany Dept. – 54 Species, 54 Taxa. Ethnobotanical plants, Collections by specific collectors, | |
| Record Keeping: | Kept since 1946 Computerised |
| Record System: | Access |
| Are phenological records kept? | |
| Plant-collecting trips: | No |
| Facilities on site | |
| Herbarium: | Yes, wild and cultivated specimens. Includes bound historic herbaria |
| Library: | 400 items. Includes old herbals, ethnobotany, history of medicine, history of plant introductions. Public access only by prior appointment |
| Research facilities: | General biological laboratories, seed bank, molecular |
| Publications: | Index seminum, garden guide (1991) and 9 other Publications |
| Identifications: | Internal verification of material |
| Teaching and Education: | Primary, secondary, higher, taxonomic, public education, special courses |
| Interpretation: | Supervised garden walks, signs, brochures, guided trails |
| Friends Organisation: | Yes |
| Visitor facilities: | Café, plant shop, book shop, gift shop |
| Access to the collections - Who can visit, when etc. | |
| What are the conditions of Access to the collections? | |
| Public access: | Admission charge |
| Visitors per year: | 18 000. Schools access: 2 500 pupils per year |
| Public opening hours: | Wed-Fri, Sun: 12 noon to 5pm |
| Guiding principles behind the collection | |
| Chelsea Physic Garden was founded by the Society of Apothecaries in 1673 in order to promote study of botany for medicine, then known as the physic or healing arts. As the second oldest botanic garden in England, it still fulfils the traditional functions of scientific research and plant conservation, and undertakes to educate and inform as well as to provide the amenity of a walled 'secret' garden in the heart of London. Its aims are to demonstrate through its plantings and publications the range of species named or introduced to cultivation by a succession of distinguished curators; to pursue horticltural exellence, especially in the cultivation of rare and tender plants; to demonstrate, to all who visit, the many uses of plants and, particularly, the heritage of the plant world as our common medicine chest. | |
| Location map | |
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