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Dr Susie Nyman:
Hello and welcome to Dr Susie Nyman’s Multisensory Walks. I’m Dr Susie Nyman, your guide on this journey to explore the power of multisensory learning. In each episode, we take a stroll through different environments, sharing practical strategies and insights to help you turn everyday outings into enriching educational experiences for children with diverse learning needs.
Whether you’re a parent or teacher, join us as we discover how to make learning engaging, inclusive, and fun. Let’s embark on this adventure together. Hello, and welcome to Wisley Gardens.
Today, it’s Dr Susie Nyman doing her multisensory walks again with the famous Suzie from The Conservation Volunteers. We’re going to walk through the pinetum at Wisley Gardens. On with the show, Suzie—off we go.
Suzie:
Oh, splendid. Marvellous. So this is the pinetum. You can see already there are lots of different shades of green here. Look, just as we go in, what do you think this tree looks like?
Dr Susie Nyman:
I think it looks a bit like a cow, or maybe there would be horns—what do you reckon?
Suzie:
Possibly having a little munch down there. Lovely yellow greens on this. It almost feels like it’s plastic, but it’s not.
Dr Susie Nyman:
No, it’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning, and the new growth here has this sort of slightly blue-green hue as well. Wow, I see what you mean about the cow though.
Suzie:
Yes, or a bison with the hump here. Yeah, little tail sticking up, love that. There we are. So we’re coming in now, and I know it’s a pinetum, but there are other trees here that you can spot. You might see an oak tree as we’re going through. Oh, here’s another animal.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It looks like another cow.
Suzie:
It does. There’s a couple of horns. Very nice, that’s very good. And that one’s rather different, isn’t it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, it looks a bit like a Christmas tree without half the branches, to be honest.
Suzie:
It does, amazing colours. And these two branches at the front look like a pair of arms coming around to give you a big hug.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It does look like a spiral of arms, doesn’t it?
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And hands coming up like that. Yeah, it’s amazing.
Suzie:
And this one’s somebody bent right over.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes, yes, it looks like a gymnast. There’s another cow over there.
Suzie:
Oh yes, there is, yeah. Maybe that’s a horse, it’s got a long tail.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, this one over here looks a bit like a woolly mammoth. And we’re walking past some lovely silver birch trees, just here.
Suzie:
They are indeed, with a lovely whisper sound.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, absolutely beautiful. And it’s a completely different tree here. And this, you can see the lenticels on the bark—have a feel, and these nice stripes on there. Beautiful, beautiful cherry.
Suzie:
Beautiful.
Dr Susie Nyman:
There we go. That looks like Gandalf. Yes, a massive one.
Suzie:
And how high do you think that is?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Wow, that’s got to be 25 feet, 20 to 25 feet.
Suzie:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
That’s old money, so I don’t know what that is in metric. Yeah, very high. It looks like twice the height of a house, which is absolutely amazing.
Suzie:
We’ve got some lovely trees here with some red leaves as well. You can see the leaves are starting to change colour. They’re all cherry. This is another cherry, we’ve got the Prunus there. Another cherry tree there.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, and last time I came here, it was full of grasses, so we might see some grasses down there. And you’ve got a special identification chart there, haven’t you?
Suzie:
Yes, an excellent one from Wild ID. Yeah, so we can have a look at the grasses as we get through the next bit of the area and see what we’ve got on the list.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, there’s a couple here on the right. They look a bit like foxtails. And we used to go for nature walks on Wednesdays when I was at primary school, and we used to collect the seeds. You can collect the seeds like that, can’t you?
Suzie:
You can indeed, just spread the love.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, there are a few brambles here, you can see the blackberries coming out. And as we walk along, there are lots and lots of different trees, even though it’s a pinetum. You can see lots of other species here, can’t you? We’re coming up to another one that looks like an animal over there, sort of a light green one.
Suzie:
Benji, what is your favourite fruit and vegetable?
Dr Susie Nyman:
This is amazing, with almost fern-like leaves—look at them. Aren’t they lovely? Look how the wind catches them and makes them wave—little hands waving to us. How beautiful is that? You can see they’re a lot brighter than the newer leaves, can’t you? And look at the width of this tree—I mean, it must be at least 200 years old, I would say.
Suzie:
Oh, at least, at least. That’s massive.
Dr Susie Nyman:
We used to live near an arboretum in Oxfordshire, and we ran around the whole arboretum with a massive tape measure one day with my son to see which tree had the biggest diameter circumference, and he would run around and run around until he’d found the best tree with the widest trunk. It was amazing, and then we went out with a friend, and she enjoyed doing that too. We went up to Streetly and looked at that, which is nice. There’s a nice red tree over there.
Suzie:
Looks like an Acer from here. I think it’s an Acer. Wonderful colours. Absolutely beautiful. We’ve got so many meadow grasses here, Susie.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I know. We’ve got rye grasses, meadow grasses. They’re tremendous, aren’t they? The differences—I mean, there are thousands of different types of grass, but just to see them all clumped together, it’s like a festival of grasses.
Suzie:
It is. Look at that piney one up there.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I know. What do you think this one looks like? A dragon to me. A dragon on the ground with its wings outstretched and just having a little rest because there’s his head, there’s his tail, and these ones here are the wings—that looks beautiful.
Suzie:
And we’ve got some more wizardy ones. These just remind me of wizards because of the way they hang, like a wizard’s cloak would hang. I’ve got some grasses on the right here.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You’ve got those on the charts. That’s it there. It’s a meadow foxtail. They are taller than me, and I’m five foot four, and I’m really short, but that one is taller than me, isn’t it? Nearly six foot, these grasses.
Suzie:
We’ve got a nice thistle here. I think that’s a spear thistle. They’re most beautiful colours, and you want to see the butterflies when they open up the proboscis to access the nectar. It’s just incredible. If you’ve just got a moment in time just to watch that, we’re lucky enough to see butterflies doing that. It’s quite warm today, so we might see some butterflies.
Dr Susie Nyman:
We might see. There’s another animal shape.
Suzie:
Oh yes, it’s like a bear.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I was just going to say. Sat on his bottom. Yes, looking down at little carbon at the bottom holding it.
Suzie:
That’s amazing.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Suzie, you’re the only other person I think that actually sees trees as animals. You can just see the shapes in them. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s definitely a bear with its head leaning over and looking down. That is a Picea omorika pendula. There we go. The pendula usually means hanging down, doesn’t it? Oh, Susie, look. There’s a pine cone. A lovely little pine cone. That’s lovely, isn’t it?
Suzie:
And do you remember when we spoke about Sarah Jane and she said some of those pine cones felt like little furry bees?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, she said they felt like dried bees.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Never thought of anything like that. Quite an amazing lady she is. Yeah. Oh, another wizard. Oh yes, there is another wizard. And this one looks like a dancing meerkat, don’t you think?
Suzie:
Yes, so that one there is a Pinus sylvestris, Scots pine. Yeah, my favourite. We studied that in biology. Pinus sylvestris. Oh, here’s another one. This one here on the left looks like a wizard with very long arms.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It does, embracing, welcoming.
Suzie:
Oh, a llama. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe that we’ve got the same animal. But I think if you actually stand in front of it, it could look a bit like a peacock before the feathers—before the feathers, where they’re all collected together and not fanned out.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes, yes, I see that. We’re just avoiding the molehills on the floor there. There’s quite a few.
Suzie:
Holy moly. Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I’m just going to see what that tree is over here that looks like the llama. Oh, how do we say this, Susie? This is a really Sequoiadendron giganteum pendulum.
Suzie:
Great name. Sequoias are a very ancient tree.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes, you see a lot of sequoias in California, and there’s one so wide in Sequoia National Park that you can actually drive through it. Oh, here’s another one. Picea koyamae ‘Vegerii Cascade’. Look at those beautiful pine cones. They feel amazing.
Suzie:
They look like they’re going to be spiky and horrible, but they’re soft.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You stroke them the right way.
Suzie:
Yeah, you stroke them the right way.
Dr Susie Nyman:
They’re so soft. And that’s like an animal bending down to drink, to munch something or drink something.
Suzie:
Absolutely, yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You know, a bit like a flamingo. C’est possible, yes. Yeah. There we go. Oh, here on the left we’ve got a lot of pine cones hanging down, haven’t we?
Suzie:
Yeah, but the tree doesn’t look very happy itself.
Dr Susie Nyman:
No.
Suzie:
Some of the needles are quite yellow. The pine cones are prolific.
Dr Susie Nyman:
They are, but the needles look quite dry.
Suzie:
Pinus ponderosa. Variation there, or the variety ‘Scopulorum’.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I’m not very good with the Latin.
Suzie:
Very difficult to say the Latin words. I think the pine cones on this tree are really beautiful.
Dr Susie Nyman:
On the right, you sometimes see them dropping on the floor. You see the needles—how long would you say they are? About two inches?
Suzie:
Oh, easily. Yeah, two to three inches. Most of the pine needles so far we’ve seen are about an inch long, but these are about two inches.
Dr Susie Nyman:
This is to be able to protect themselves, isn’t it? Against extreme heat or extreme cold.
Suzie:
Yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
That’s why the leaves of a pine tree are created that way. If you stand underneath, look at all those pine cones. There are loads of them, aren’t there?
Suzie:
Wow.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And the needles and the pine cones on the tree compared to the left-hand side—this is a much healthier tree. This is much greener.
Suzie:
Yep. It’s an enormous trunk, so it’s very old.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, it’s beautiful. That’s again a couple of hundred years. But you know, you can tell that with a stick.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You can do the stick test to see how tall the tree is. We’ll go into that later maybe.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Look at these leaves here. Oh, they’ve got little galls on them. Wow, you can see on the back. It’s a grapevine. I thought it was a grapevine.
Suzie:
It’s a grapevine, yes. Wow. It’s got some galls all over its leaves, so it’s little creatures making their homes there in the leaves.
Dr Susie Nyman:
This nice hawthorn bush. Here’s another pine tree with the leaves that are about an inch long, two and a half centimetres. It looks like a yew.
Suzie:
No, it’s a Japanese fir. Just a Japanese fir. But it almost has a yew-like appearance.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes, it does. Oh, but when you feel it, feel that. It’s really soft. Very different to touching a yew tree, a native yew tree.
Suzie:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s like we’re in Giantsville now.
Suzie:
We are.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Absolutely enormous. 30, 40, 50 feet maybe.
Suzie:
Yeah, really, really tall. This is like a little bird shaking its booty.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, gotcha.
Suzie:
Yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, here’s some grass, Suzie, on the right here. Now this is a different type of grass, so… well, there’s a type of grass called Timothy.
Suzie:
Yes, I know. It could well be a Timothy actually.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, wow.
Suzie:
It could be. These are all the rye grasses that we’re looking at on the ID sheet. And there’s a vernal grass. That looks similar as well, doesn’t it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah.
Suzie:
Or the oat grasses.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes.
Suzie:
Yeah. I saw a cock’s-foot somewhere.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You did.
Suzie:
A meadow fescue.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, I think you’re right.
Suzie:
It’s quite lumpy, isn’t it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, I think you’re right. Yeah, that’s probably about four feet tall. Well, I do feel miniature walking through these giants, I have to say.
Suzie:
You do. It looks beautiful though.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I think that tree up there looks like a ballerina, that little tree up there.
Suzie:
Oh yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Doing one of their moves. I don’t know if you can see that. This tree here looks like an old man bending over.
Suzie:
Pinus strobus, it’s prostrate.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes.
Suzie:
It’s prostrate. It is prostrata. Amazing. Just imagine an old man bending over and picking up his shoes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yep, totally see that. Yeah, there’s a little bench there. I’ve never noticed that before. Oh, look at that grass. I mean, that’s six foot easily.
Suzie:
Yes, beautiful.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s an oat grass. If you look at the top. Oh wow. Yeah, I’m just going over. Nearly missed this one. Juniperus chinensis.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s a Chinese juniper. That’s about up to my knee. It’s not very big. It must be a new one. But it’s beautiful.
Suzie:
It is. It’s beautiful.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s so tiny compared to these giants. This definitely looks like oats. So we would say six and a half because that is a head or two taller than me. So that must be at least six feet. At least six feet. That’s definitely an oat grass, just by the look of how the seed heads have formed.
Suzie:
Yeah. They’re used a lot in dried flower arrangements because of their texture. And if you watch how the wind takes them as well, they’re divine. Absolutely divine.
Dr Susie Nyman:
There’s a little oak tree there that’s just sort of planted, I think. Self-seeded possibly.
Suzie:
Possibly, yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
This bit I love here. It’s a little display full of pine cones. That tree to your right has this wonderful bark. What would you call that? Kind of knobbly on the way up.
Suzie:
Yes, it’s got like layers of itself. I think sometimes there you look a bit like an elephant’s leg.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Pinus nigra. Salsamani. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s like scales, isn’t it?
Suzie:
It is.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You’d imagine dragon scales to be this thick and this robust.
Suzie:
Or even the leg of a triceratops.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes. I like that. What are those big ones? Brontosaurus.
Suzie:
Brontosaurus. They had the big legs.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Diplodocus. Gotcha. Tyrannosaurus rex. Here we go. Here is the display of the pine cones. Size difference. So at the bottom, we’ve got the smallest ones with the Japanese. Oh my goodness, a Summit Caesar is about the size of what Sarah-Jane described as a bee.
Suzie:
Yep.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Feeling like a bee. I think this one is the roundest, the largest diameter Jefferies pine. That’s the longest. The Holford pine. Wow. Absolutely amazing. Oh, we’ve got another pine here and another tree that looks like an animal. It looks like an elephant.
Suzie:
The Cupressus. Or like you said, a woolly mammoth.
Dr Susie Nyman:
I think that’s definitely a woolly mammoth.
Suzie:
Yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Definitely. He’s having a little rest. Look at these grasses, Suzie. What’s that on your chart?
Suzie:
I think that’s a foxtail.
Dr Susie Nyman:
A foxtail. One of the foxtails. You can just go underneath and release. You can look at them and have a guess as to what. They do look like a fox’s tail actually.
Suzie:
They do.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Bushy and that. And take a look at this one. It’s just taking the seeds off, and you just feel those seeds and crumble them through your fingers.
Suzie:
You’re sowing next year’s crop by doing that.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Too right. We’ll just keep sowing that crop. Keep it going. There we go. There’s a school of thought that back in the sort of 50s and 60s, you had signs everywhere saying, “Keep off the grass, keep off the grass.” But one of my tutors at Merrist Wood would say to me, “No, walk on the grass because you’re picking up the seeds and you’re spreading them.”
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
There’s a school of thought on that one. And that’s how nature spreads those seeds. And the birds eat the fruit, and they then drop the seeds in a different place. We’ve got wind pollinators.
Suzie:
You know about the seeds that pass through birds. The reason they pass through the birds and the seeds come out the other way is that the digestive system of the bird breaks down the outer casing of the seed. So when it plops out, literally, it’s ready to germinate.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, that’s brilliant. And this one here, look, it’s so red. The bark is so red here. This tree—it’s a Pinus contorta. Do you know, when you were looking from the path at this, it almost looked like snake skin?
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It almost looked like a snake or maybe a Komodo dragon, but definitely reptilian skin. But when you come up close, it’s not. It’s from a distance. It’s contorted into many, many different shapes, isn’t it?
Suzie:
Isn’t it beautiful? It hasn’t just got one trunk. I remember my primary school teacher saying that trees, when you’re drawing them, draw them in Ys because you have the main trunk, and then they split, especially with oak trees. But here, from the base—from the base, I mean that base has got to be three metres in diameter, circumference rather, at least—maybe four. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six main trunks coming up out of that. And some have been taken off as well, as you can see the cuts.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And if you look at the debris on the ground, these are the seeds from the cones from that tree.
Suzie:
They are.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And they’ll get scuffed along by us walking, and they’ll germinate somewhere else.
Suzie:
That’s right.
Dr Susie Nyman:
This one looks like a lady with one of those big skirts.
Suzie:
Oh yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
A wedding dress.
Suzie:
Oh maybe.
Dr Susie Nyman:
One of those meringue wedding dresses. I think this is back in fashion. Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Squarrosa Sulphurea’. So a Saguaro cypress.
Suzie:
Oh, that means if you rub it, it’ll smell. Oh, smell that. Oh, the sulphur.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s not a sulphur smell.
Suzie:
No, I wonder why they called it sulphury.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s a really beautiful smell of pine.
Suzie:
That’s so fresh, isn’t it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah. Such a fresh, beautiful smell.
Suzie:
Really nice. Not all pines smell, but cedars especially have an incredible smell. And definitely, that tree has the most amazing scent on my fingers.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah. It’s lovely. There’s one that looks like a mini Christmas tree.
Suzie:
So that’s a Christmas tree for little people. Picea smithiana ‘Sunray’. It’s a little spruce.
Dr Susie Nyman:
It’s really lovely. See how the needles are so delicate compared to the big trees we’ve passed? They’ve got the big thick long needles. These are no more than an inch maximum, and they’re thin but still soft.
Suzie:
Yes. Beautiful.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Beautiful green. Can you hear the crickets and the grasshoppers?
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
A little cheering in the background. It’s quite relaxing, really.
Suzie:
Oh, relaxing. Hang on, in my back pocket, I’ve got this book about forest bathing.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, super.
Suzie:
Because you know, that’s what we’re doing. And in the book, it says, “Forest Bathing for Positive Mental Health. The practice of forest bathing is scientifically proven to help us think more clearly and to improve our overall well-being. It’s thought that the quiet atmosphere, beautiful scenery, and temperate climate often found in forests all over the world contribute to this sense of wellness.”
Dr Susie Nyman:
There’s another school of thought that science is catching up with as well, which is that as we’re walking through the forest, we are inhaling all the smells, but we’re also, as we’re looking at the colours, it has an effect on our mind and our emotions through visual experience. So the colours are resonating on the back of our retinas, and that information is subconsciously being transmitted to our brains, which helps to calm panicky thoughts, anxiety, and bring that sense of calm. So reaching—when you reach out and touch a leaf as well—you’re feeling the texture, so you’ve got sight, smell, and texture—feeling.
Suzie:
And under this beautiful tree, which has these lovely—do you see those beautiful fruits on this tree?
Dr Susie Nyman:
What’s the tree? Oh, it’s Amelanchier alnifolia. We’ve also got cyclamens, so they almost look like fairies dancing underneath this tree. Beautiful white ones, and cream ones, and pink ones, and there are some bees on that over there as well. How beautiful.
Suzie:
So this tree is also showing us how it can restore itself. So if the main part of the tree was cut down, it has small branches coming out from the very base of its trunk and from the roots that are protruding from the soil. This is how phoenix trees form as well. If anything were to happen to this main tree, i.e. fire or something that would sweep across the canopy and wipe it out from the top down, it would still survive because it’s growing its new growth down here.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And down there, right at the end of the root as well—so that’s what, two metres from the main tree on this, what do you call this, raised root? Butcher’s root? I know it’s growing from the very end of this root.
Suzie:
How splendid. Einstein says, “Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” What can you see?
Dr Susie Nyman:
It just came and gave me a kiss, this little beauty. How beautiful are you? I think this might—I think it’s a day-flying moth, and I think it’s a banded moth.
Suzie:
Can you see the band around it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah. So they get a variety of moths. Not all moths are nocturnal; many moths are day moths. And because of its shape, I think that’s more of a moth than a butterfly. I’m no expert on them whatsoever.
Suzie:
So if you get closer, male moths have feathery antennae, so I’m just looking to see if they’ve got feathery antennae. If they haven’t, it might be the female moth producing the pheromones. There we go.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Well, these grasses are different here as well.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Look at them, they’re much more robust, whereas the others were really wavy. These are really strong.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And that’s definitely a foxtail—look at that.
Suzie:
Yes, it is. So it’s one of the many foxtails that we have. And over here, you’ve got some lovely monkey puzzle trees. They are such fun to look at—they look a bit like Chinese writing, don’t you think?
Dr Susie Nyman:
I understand that, I totally get that. And look how this one—the bottom branches are hanging down, but the further up the tree you go, they’re coming out like fingers stepping up, almost like your buzzards and condors where their wings—the end tips of the wings tip up, and then right at the very top, it’s going right up in a lovely arch. Oh, they’re lovely—that spikiness in the middle of the trunk.
Suzie:
Dragons again—I go straight to dragons.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Definitely dragons. If you come to the back of it—what I find, this is just an observation—that when trees are planted roughly at the same time, they look very similar.
Suzie:
Yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Don’t they?
Suzie:
Yes, they’re both similar. Similar shape.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yep. Yeah. And wow, that trunk looks amazing, doesn’t it? Look at those needles. They look absolutely awful, but if you stroke them the right way, they’re actually quite soft.
Suzie:
How do you say that?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh my gosh, let’s give it a go. Araucaria. Yes.
Suzie:
Araucana.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Lovely. And the tip—these ones at the very end, the fresh growth.
Suzie:
Yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
That’s just lovely. Bright green there. That one would have been planted slightly later. So it’s about half the size of these two, isn’t it? Yeah, we’ve got two roughly the same height.
Suzie:
Oh, what’s this one cordoned off? Why have you got this special treatment?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Maybe because it’s a young tree? Ah, eastern hemlock.
Suzie:
Ah, you like the hemlocks, don’t you?
Dr Susie Nyman:
There are a lot of them in Wisley Woods.
Suzie:
Yep, but they’re not native, but we have the western hemlock, so I’m just interested to see what the difference is. The needles are much smaller than the western hemlock.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh yeah.
Suzie:
And they have a lovely yellow-green on top. If you look underneath, they’re sort of blue-pastel green underneath.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah.
Suzie:
How beautiful is that?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, and the fruits of Lords and Ladies at the bottom.
Suzie:
The colours. Oh yes.
Dr Susie Nyman:
You can tell autumn’s around the corner because the autumn colours are just beginning to peek through here and there. The cherries we saw earlier, the Lords and Ladies’ fruits there as well. So autumn’s just around.
Suzie:
Oh, the wavy grasses up here. More oat grasses.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Well, they’re definitely six-footers.
Suzie:
Cool, aren’t they?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yeah, they’re very, very tall. Oh, here we go. Here’s something to talk about. In the middle of all this lovely grass—we’ve got wavy grass, we’ve got foxtails, we’ve got oat grass—but do you know what this one is? This lovely blue flower on a tall spike that’s about four feet, maybe four and a half feet. Do you know what that is?
Suzie:
No.
Dr Susie Nyman:
That’s wild chicory. That is a native, but the flowers are just incredible, aren’t they?
Suzie:
Yeah.
Dr Susie Nyman:
And of course, that’s all edible, but the flowers will only last a day. So tomorrow those flowers will be gone, but other flowers will have opened. Excellent. We’re just going to walk through these grasses. Look at the tiny bindweed.
Suzie:
Oh, it’s so pretty.
Dr Susie Nyman:
We normally want to get rid of that, don’t we? But it’s here, you know, and the flowers are beautiful. Here’s the rosemary, which does represent and does look like pine as well. And you look at it.
Suzie:
Oh, the smell.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Oh, Susie, rosemary for remembrance. And the volatile oils in this are so, so strong. It helps to ward off insects. It used to be a strewing herb as well, so it’s so strong, but it’s also antibacterial.
Suzie:
Yes, good for medicinal properties.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Absolutely. All they’re free in nature. You’ve just got to grow a little bit in your garden. Walking through the grass, walking through the bindweed with the beautiful pink flowers about a centimetre and a half in diameter there. And we’ve got a haystack right at the end. So it says here, “This haystack was created from dried and stacked meadow cuttings. It forms an ornamental structure, benefits wildlife, and creates new horticultural opportunities.”
Suzie:
Absolutely. It does look rather like an old-fashioned skep as well, doesn’t it?
Dr Susie Nyman:
Yes. But this is what people can do in their own gardens. So Wisley is also about what you can do in your own space, however big or small it is. So the grasses we’ve just walked through—even a sort of metre-square patch can…
Dr Susie Nyman:
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us on our walk through the Wisley pinetum this morning. We’ve explored the different colours of the pine needles, the various trees, the diverse shapes, the fascinating pine cones, and the haystack. I hope we’ve given you some ideas on how you can walk through a forest, making it exciting, engaging, and a learning experience about nature. Thanks to Suzie for joining me on this walk.
Suzie:
My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Dr Susie Nyman:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Dr Susie Nyman’s Multisensory Walks. I hope you found today’s discussion insightful and inspiring. Remember, every walk is an opportunity to learn and grow. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button, share with fellow parents and teachers, and leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Reach out to us on social media or email us at [email protected]. Stay curious, stay proactive, and let’s continue to create fun, multisensory learning adventures together. Until next time, happy walking.
