Explore our wild botanic garden, home to the Millennium Seed Bank and over 500 acres of the world’s plants in the heart of Sussex.

Coates Wood

As soon as you step into Coates Wood, it feels like you’ve entered another part of the world.

Ochre red bark, silvery foliage and the menthol fragrance of eucalyptus transport you to Australia.

Pass through the woodlands of Australia and New Zealand spotting eucalyptus, Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobillis) and southern beech (Nothofagus sp). This area is home to the national collection of Nothofagus, a distant cousin  of our native beech (Fagus sylvatica), but exclusive to the southern hemisphere.

Australia moves to Chile and one of the most dramatic landscapes at Wakehurst. On a steep hill is an extraordinary planting of over 60 monkey puzzles, collected from Chile by Wakehurst horticulturists. Endangered in the wild, monkey-puzzle seed cannot be stored (a trait know as recalcitrance) in the Millennium Seed Bank and can only be protected through living collections like Wakehurst’s.

Westwood Valley

Explore a woodland landscape inspired by the eastern Himalaya.

A steep ravine running from the Water Gardens to Westwood Lake, Westwood Valley is home to Wakehurst’s Asian collection of trees and shrubs.

The area represents the landscape of the eastern Himalaya below the tree-line, with semi-evergreen forests of rhododendrons, limes, magnolias, maples, alders, oaks, birches, rowan and conifers.

Westwood Valley has stunning views of the wider landscape. The Loder Valley viewpoint takes in a gorgeous, meandering bend of the Ardingly reservoir, wrapped in meadows and woodland.