In 1846, Sir Robert Loder bought The Beeches (High Beeches), setting the stage for a family legacy that would go on to include Leonardslee and Wakehurst. The Loder Trail takes in these three gardens.
Gerald Loder took over Wakehurst in 1903, 14 years after his brother Edmund bought Leonardslee. Gerald went on to transform Wakehurst into a botanical collection of global scope and renown. Meticulous and deeply scientific, he sourced plants from across the temperate world, integrating them with Sussex’s Wealden landscape. Autumn was no afterthought; colour was deliberately scattered across the estate, from the golden birches to the fiery east coast maples.
Today, Wakehurst strikes a balance between the quiet elegance of High Beeches and the intensity of Leonardslee with pockets of tranquillity the further you walk and bustling corners of seasonal colour and drama nearer the house.
Gerald the man
Bethan Hobbs, Interpretation Producer at Wakehurst, explains more about Gerald, the man and the powerful impression he made at Wakehurst.
“Gerald Loder’s legacy at Wakehurst is as much about his personality as it is about the plants he nurtured. According to his great-great-grandson, Loder was a man of formidable focus – so devoted to his gardens that plants took precedence over family, politics and social niceties. Warmth was not his strong suit – one Christmas he dined alone while his wife and children went their separate ways.
He ran Wakehurst with military precision, giving his head gardener, Alfred Coates, and other staff their orders before catching the train to Westminster. Known for his mantra “right plant, right place,” he shunned the fashionable hybrids of brother in favour of pure botanical species, and his approach was both exacting and experimental.
Though he travelled, he also funded plant-hunting expeditions, working within an elite network of horticulturalists and sharing seeds with other great Sussex gardens. Competition between the Loder brothers was fierce but productive, their gardens influencing landscapes far beyond their boundaries. To this day, Wakehurst reflects Loder’s meticulous standards, scientific curiosity and belief that a garden’s true worth lies in its ability to endure and inspire long after its creator is gone.”
If a tree is worth seeing, it’s worth walking to.
Head of Landscape & Horticulture at Wakehurst, Iain Parkinson, explains more about the past, the present and the future of Wakehurst
What would this landscape have been like before Gerald Loder arrived?
The Westwood Valley at Wakehurst is typical of the High Weald: rolling countryside cut through with deep, wooded ravines known locally as gills. The streams here are the headwaters of the River Ouse. The landscape was shaped during the Ice Age, but more recent history was surprisingly industrial. From Roman times through the post-Medieval period, this was ironworking country. The surrounding oak and beech woods were coppiced for charcoal to fuel the furnaces, and the streams dammed to create lakes to power water wheels and hammers. Two hundred years ago, this would have been exclusively native woodland: oak, ash, beech but a noisy place with the frenetic activity of the iron industry.
By 1903, the iron industry was gone. What would Loder have inherited?
A heavily wooded valley with scars from past industry. He felled trees to let in light for his young plantings, something we still have to do. Gardens can’t stand still. To move forward, you have to make space for new collections, especially now as we plan for climate resilience.
Why was this such a great landscape for the kind of planting the Loder family became known for?
The Sussex gardens’ great advantage lies in their growing conditions: high elevation, high rainfall and sheltered microclimates in these valleys. The soil is moist but well-drained, which is crucial for most plants, and the frost protection makes it possible to grow species here that would struggle elsewhere in Britain.
The landscape feels very Himalayan in parts.
The topography here reminded past curators and plant collectors of the Himalayas, and they used that to shape the garden. Tony Schilling, a curator in the 1960s, travelled extensively in the Himalayas and created a glade here to reflect its plant communities. Gerald Loder did something similar decades earlier. He travelled widely to the Himalayas, Japan and the southern hemisphere, returning with plants and the ambition to reimagine those landscapes here.
So, from early on, this was intended to be a garden of trees and shrubs, not flowers?
Yes. When Loder took on Wakehurst in 1903, he and his head gardener, Alfred Coates, decided trees and shrubs should be the focus. That decision shaped Wakehurst into an arboretum-style garden.
It’s bitter-sweet that Loder never saw many of his plantings at maturity.
That’s the nature of horticulture. I’ve worked here 40 years, and I won’t see the full results of my own planting either. For Loder, it was about the process, the experimentation. He was effectively running a living laboratory, testing which plants would survive here, much as we still do today.
Let’s talk about the 1987 storm.
The hurricane was devastating and we lost around 20,000 trees, including about 80% of Loder’s collections. But it also opened up opportunities. We redesigned the garden as a walk through the temperate woodlands of the world with Asia, the Americasand the southern hemisphere incorporating surviving Loder plants and new scientific collections.
You’ve called Wakehurst a palimpsest, a landscape of layers. How do you add your own mark?
Every owner and curator has shaped this place. My role is to protect the best of that legacy while planning for a changing climate. That means introducing resilient species, like deep-rooted prairie plants that cope with drought and creating new landscapes, such as our forthcoming Silk Road Garden, which will feature rare and edible species from the Caucasus. It’s about ensuring Wakehurst remains both beautiful and relevant for the next 50 years.
And in autumn, this valley must rival spring for spectacle?
Our native trees give muted russets, but Loder’s introductions bring in fiery reds from Japan, golds from the Americas, and brilliant contrasts from Asia. Wakehurst is a garden for all seasons.
For full details of the Loder Trail and the history of the three gardens, visit:
