Last updated: 13 October 2016
| Address and contact details | |
| Name of Garden: | Chelsea Physic Garden |
| 66 Hospital Road, London, SW3 4HS | |
| Tel: 0171352 5646 | |
| Fax: 0171 3763910 | |
| Email: enquiries@chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk | |
| Web site: www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk | |
| Latitude: 51° 29' 00" N | |
| Longitude: 0° 9' 44" E | |
| (mapquest.com provides an excellent way of checking how accurate your co-ordinates are) | |
| Background to the collection | |
| Year founded: | 1673 |
| Ownership: | Independent Charity |
| 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: | Nick Bailey |
| Director/Curator: | Sue Medway |
| Deputy Head Gardener/Propagation Manager: | Nell Jones |
| Plant Records Manager: | Joe Bassett |
| Glasshouse Manager: | Lucy Rowley |
| Contact person: | Nick Bailey (nbailey@chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk) |
| Total Staff: | 17 (5 Horticultural Staff, 2 Education staff, 10 Administration Staff) |
| Total Horticultural Staff: | 5 |
| 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: | 17.06 °C (2014) |
| Av. monthly min: | 9.4 °C (2014) |
| Absolute maximum: | 26.56 °C (2014) |
| Absolute minimum: | 4.2 °C (2014) |
| Wind | |
| Direction: | West |
| Strength: | Below average |
| Rainfall | |
| Average annual: | 556.45 mm (2014) |
| Month of maximum: | January (2014) |
| Month of minimum: | March (2014) |
| Plant collection | |
| Families: | 231 |
| Genera: | 1,503 |
| Species: | 3,883 |
| Taxa: | 5,004 |
| Accessions: | 6,350 |
| Plants: | 7,824 |
| Notable plants within the collection: | |
| Largest grapefruit tree and olive tree outside in British Isles. | |
| Geographical area(s) of specialisation: | |
| Macaronesia, Southern Africa | |
| Special families within the collections: | |
| Geraniaceae | |
| Special genera within the collections: | |
| Pelargonium | |
| Special collections: | |
| Medicinal Plants of the World, Plants used in Pharmaceuticals, Edible & Useful Plants, Historical Plants, Dicotyledon Order Beds, Medicinal Plants from Forest and Woodland, Pelargoniums | |
| Record Keeping: | Kept since 1946 Computerised |
| Record System: | IrisBG |
| 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: | Sseed bank |
| Publications: | Index Seminum, Garden Guide |
| Identifications: | Internal verification of material by specialist taxonomist Yes |
| 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: | 55,000 |
| Public opening hours: | The Garden, café and shop are currently open Tuesday - Friday, Sundays and Bank Holidays, 11am - 6pm. |
| 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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