A 27-acre woodland and water garden in the Sussex High Weald, created fr
High Beeches Gardens is a 27-acre woodland and water garden in the Sussex High Weald, created from 1906 by Colonel Giles Loder on land adjoining the Leonardslee estate. Like Leonardslee, it occupies a sheltered valley that provides the acid soil, high rainfall and protection from frost that enables a remarkable range of trees and shrubs to thrive. The garden contains Champion Trees — specimens that are the largest of their kind in Great Britain — and a National Collection of Stewartias.
In spring, the woodland floor is carpeted with naturalised bulbs — bluebells, narcissus, erythroniums and trilliums — under a canopy of flowering trees and shrubs that includes magnolias, camellias and rhododendrons of great maturity. In autumn, the same trees produce extraordinary colour that rivals any garden in England. The water garden, with its series of linked ponds and bog garden, provides a contrasting mood of quietude and reflection.
High Beeches remains a family garden, now managed by the Boscawen family, and has the intimacy and personal character that family ownership confers. Unlike the great National Trust properties, it is a garden where the family's own tastes and enthusiasms are still evident in the planting — which gives it a freshness and individuality that larger, more institutional gardens sometimes lack.