RHS Reviews 256

RHS Wisley - Great Easter Egg Hunt - really???? We paid £17.55 each hoping the grandchildren would have a magical time on the egg hunt.

Around the grounds they had plonked 6 or 7 three foot high plastic eggs, and expected kids to be impressed. Well ours certainly were not.

And their "prize" (which we had to queue up for) was 2 squares of chocolate and a 2 inch cardboard bunny.

What a complete and utter waste of time and money. Would definately not recommend this - especially as virtually none of the flowers/plants were in bloom, so nothing else to look at either.

And to top it all there were no gluten free sandwhiches or cakes, and the hot meals at £12.00 each were a rip-off.

Shocking!!!

Visited RHS Bridgewater in March on a beautiful day. All we saw was a brown, boring vista: not a daffodil or other Spring flower in sight - except on a small plants-for-sale table outside the restaurant. I know it's a newish garden but there has been plenty of time to plant bulbs last Autumn. Doesn't the garden art include colour year-round? Seeing the long food queue, we went to a local garden centre for lunch where colour blazed everywhere. I have photos but no means of adding them....

RHS Bridgewater
Lovely place to visit even in March. However please sort the cafe out. Queueing out the door on a relatively quiet day. If you visit I’d recommend bringing your own food.

Poor online and phone service.

My wife an rhs member tried to update her password online but was locked out. She then phoned and received very little help. I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

Visited the cafe inattentive staff. Food poor gif the price.
Small Baked potato, Luke warm’ salt crystals seen on skin of potato. I hate salt!! Small portion of cheese and coleslaw. Not worth £6-50. Did not complain because I did not think I would get a good service. Would not recommend or visit again .

Visited Rosemoor and ended up with membership from an enthusiastic ambassador.
Subsequently bought a sculpture at £1750 and was advised the sculptor would be assembling and installing in our garden at a charge of £80. We then via email got a receipt giving zero value and advising when we could pick up.
With this confusing information I asked via email for clarity, 7 working days later no reply.
Phoned first call goes to messaging service message left.Phoned membership who put me through to reception at Rosemoor, 50 mins later and still waiting with those magic words...please continue to hold.
Looks like Ill will have the 1 1/2hr journey to Rosemoor to sort. What a totally unsatisfactory customer service experience. Chris Turner_Robson

Just visited winter light show 'Glow' at Bridgewater. Underwhelmed, just spotlights on trees and plants finished in less than an hour for £11 each. Not worth.the.money. much better shows around

Attended Glow at Wisley over the weekend. Not overly impressed at all. Lacked atmosphere throughout a lot of the areas, whilst some displays with the added background music were amazing. Couple of members of staff were quite rude, especially the young female in one of the outside coffee stalls, didn't seem to know what she was doing in the slightest. To be fair, did interact with a couple of great staff members too.
We had booked evening tickets (after 7pm) but were not told that we would have to be totally finished and out of centre as they were closed dead on 9pm, we were basically ushered out of the shop without a chance to buy anything and god forbid if you wanted another hot drink or snack ..... tough. Would have been nice to have been advised when we arrived of the strict time constraints

RHS Bridgewater. Went early September. Very disappointed,in my view needs at least another couple of years before charging the public full price for entry. As a gardener I know in the future it will look fabulous.

I wrote to the RHS gardening advice service for some insights as to the demise of my apricot tree. The reply came back next day and was incredibly helpful and thorough from Dr. Matthew Cromey (plant pathologist). Just amazing service - thank you

Attended the Chelsea flower show September 2021.
We were very disappointed. The BBC make it look as something it's not.
First of all there isn't that many gardens, about half a dozen in total.
You can't walk around them, they are too small to walk around anyway.
The displays inside are good, but nothing that you couldn't see in a good garden centre.
The main thrust of the show is the rows and rows and even more rows of vendors trying to interest you in their overpriced wares and others accosting you in an attempt to sign up with a wildlife charity with the added embarrassment of having to say 'no'.
Travelled a long way to visit the show and paid a very high parking fee.
Certainly not worth the effort and certainly not worth the ticket price. In fact when you take all into consideration, the ticket price, the parking and the cost to eat and drink at the venue, it is in my opinion a real rip-off.

It is with regret that we are going to write this review. Earlier in the year we booked tickets for the Tatton park flower show in July. However as we are care workers and being loyal to the company and the people within the home we were unable to go to the flower show. We have contacted ticket master and the RHS to get a refund on several occasions to get a refund without success. We are aware that we may not have been the only ones who were unable to go. Therefore the RHS have accrued a lot of free money. We paid £60. In this current climate of covid etc RHS needs to review their policy and provide refunds after all we paid a lot of money for Lifetime Membership. We saved this £60 over a couple of months so we could have a rare treat.

Sheer complacency across the board

Booked and paid In advance as advised , received email confirmation

Went to check the date and time slot closer to the booked date , to discover the email confirmation didn’t contain the date or time only a confirmation that a booking had been made. Now I could have made a note of it so not complaining at this point just found it a little odd to send a confirmation of booking containing no info.

I tried to call , many times , phone never answered , tried to email , took two weeks for a reply which informed me id contacted head office and they passed it to Bridgewater .. I’m still waiting for a reply and am confident the booked date had passed and I’ve lost my money …. Starting to understand why there was a huge protest against this place opening , waste of time and money all round

Sold me a £500 water feature , small print not frost free! Advice take in over cold months, not bothered or helpful at all. I cant move it, woould need a contractor to unistall move the re-instate. Very surprised by RHS to wash their habds of their "not fit for purpsoe" product.

Visited Tatton like we do every year this being the worst experience.I had a wheel chair to push around and couldn’t move for the shear volume of people. No COVID rules they must have missed the memo , toilets constantly being closed for 30mins at a time forcing people to walk to other end of the venue just because they did nott have enough tankers cost cutting again but then they charge you £25 for 3 crap salads. Water machines were a COVID spreader no one cleaning and 0ne hand sanitizer for each tent to deal with thousands of people it was a joke. Cash machines ran out after 2hrs. Got a good deal on the plants and felt sorry that the traders lost so much revunue because RHS couldn’t sort out the WIFi….come on RHS you can do better than this 🙈

this feedback is about the poor quality of the catering service.
The staff was no interested or showed engagement whatsoever.
I purchased 1 Cappuccino and 1 Mocha and we couldn't drink it. The taste of the coffee was terrible and the texture of the milk was like water.
I hope this helps.

I was booked on a workshop at Hyde Hall which had to be cancelled due to the leader being pinged (no issue). However it is proving a very arduous task to get a refund. It appears the RHS course organiser cannot resolve how to get this done and now according to her Out of Office message is away for the rest of the year. I am concerned the RHS may have cashflow problems and I will not get the refund after all. I cannot trust the RHS to be act honorably and will not book any further workshops with them.

Terrible Tatton , we visited the RHS tatton flower show this year, it was very disappointing….no covid safety measures in place, no masks worn by staff or QR reader codes ( I’m sure if there had been we would have all had a message to self isolate!) no one seemed to care about social distancing, but as thousands of people were all rammed into the show this would have been difficult…the country living stalls were cheek to jowl ( it’s not as if they show organisers were stuck for space when planning it!) there was a small row of portable loos which seemed to have no one cleaning or attending them😱….we paid £70 for the two of us to get in, the food was very expensive (£5.50 for a doughnut!!!!) there were very few flower stands/ stalls…it seemed to be just food and nik naks….and we only stayed for 1 hour…the RHS really need to consider their paying customers some due care and attention for their safety and not just herd everyone in to get the cash….won’t be going back again, I’d rather spend my money in a local garden centre.

We have recently become members of the RHS and visited Wisley Gardens today. My husband is in a wheelchair and we were most impressed by how disability friendly the gardens and facilities are. We were given a map of the wheelchair routes. We were also given a lift up to the Hilltop area in a new vehicle which had a wheelchair ramp. The driver who was called Rob, couldn't have been more helpful and friendly. All the staff went out of their way to be helpful to us. We had a wonderful time.

We visited the RHS flower show at tatton park Sunday the 25/7/21 on my tickets it said please ensure you have nhs covid app on your phone and proof of if which we did and was told if not we would not be allowed in, the web site relating to tatton park clearly stated that there was a one way system in place at the venue and tent were monitored people in and out this was not so free for all no checks at the gate disgusting to say the least I would like to know how checks can be made if some one or people got the virus how people would be let know don’t print stuff if you don’t intend to stand by what you say your putting in place