Ventnor Botanic Garden

Ventnor Botanic Garden
The New Zealand plants section within The Gardens, February 2007.
Type	Botanic
Location	Ventnor, Isle of Wight
Coordinates	50°35′21″N 1°13′40″W / 50.5892°N 1.2278°W / 50.5892; -1.2278
Opened	1970
Owned by	Freehold owned by Isle of Wight Council, leased to Ventnor Botanic Garden CIC
Operated by	Ventnor Botanic Garden CIC
Website	botanic.co.uk

Ventnor Botanic Garden is a botanic garden located in Ventnor, Isle of Wight. It was founded in 1970, by Sir Harold Hillier, and donated to the Isle of Wight Council.

Its collection comprises worldwide temperate and subtropical trees and shrubs organised by region. The garden's unusual climate is more akin to the Mediterranean and enables a wide variety of plants considered too tender for much of mainland Britain to be grown. These grow in the open air, and benefit from the moist and sheltered microclimate of the south-facing Undercliff landslip area on the Isle of Wight coast. When frost does occur it is usually of short duration and not of great severity.

The garden is on the site of the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, a sanatorium established there to exploit the same mild climate. Founded by Arthur Hill Hassall and opened in 1869 as the National Cottage Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, it offered 130 separate south-facing bedrooms for its patients. The hospital closed in 1964, made obsolete by drug treatment of tuberculosis, and demolished in 1969.

In 1970, the site was initially redeveloped as the Steephill Pleasure Gardens before Sir Harold Hillier's involvement in its more extensive development as a botanical garden. Despite the generally mild weather, plants had to be carefully selected to tolerate the shallow alkaline soil and salt winds, and the garden suffered serious damage in the unusually hard winter of 1986–7, the Great Storm of 1987, and another major storm in January 1990.

A large greenhouse was built in 1986 and opened in 1987, where tropical plants are grown, including a pool containing 22 tonnes of heated water showing Giant Waterlily in the summer months, with surrounding Egyptian Blue Lotus flowers.