Public Places
Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens
The garden of delights...
A Mecca for garden lovers is being reborn as an international visitor destination set in a dazzling landscape of seasonal colour. Greg Rhodes meets the team bringing Grade 1 Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens back to life
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n July, one of the greatest landscaped gardens in the UK is to reopen its doors to the public. In 2010, Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens passed into the hands of a reputed billionaire who had harboured plans to redevelop the site to present a more inclusive public offering.
Somehow, that vision never came to be, leaving garden lovers everywhere wondering if they would ever see the gardens’ glories again.
That wish is to be fulfilled, following the purchase of the 200-acre estate by Zimbabwean entrepreneur Penny Streeter, whose multi-million pound plans for the Grade 1 Listed site stretch far beyond a mere horticultural glory created out of a valley in a tranquil corner of West Sussex. Leonardslee is a garden destination to delight the public that can be marvelled at once again for its many original features - most, if not all, fashioned to some degree by human hands and ingenuity. The garden team tasked with bringing the gardens back to life commands a lifetime of experience in horticulture. “We are piecing together the jigsaw of this unique garden,” comments General Manager Adam Streeter, Penny’s son, “and need all the skills and resources of a large team to do it.”
“The gardens are opening soon but the process of recataloguing the huge number and diversity of plants continues, as does relabelling and electronically tagging everything out there,” he adds. When the head gardener first came on site and met Adam, he declared the mission “quite mad”. Everything was green with algae, overgrown and, in parts,
106 I PC JUNE/JULY 2018
impenetrable as years of reported neglect had taken their toll.
“Such a magnificent site but smothered in a layer of weeds and unwanted growth,” was the head gardener’s verdict. Knotweed had invaded the site, but thankfully only a small patch, which the team is managing. Silver birch saplings had taken over in areas surrounding the 18th century stately mansion - restored now as the home of Interlude, a fine dining restaurant opening later this year, and a venue for wedding receptions, ceremonies and events.
Bracken and heather had burst through their confines - they were fine in their place but unwelcome in the more cultivated feature areas such as The Rock Garden, Bluebell Glade or Camellia Grove. “The herd of wallabies that had lived here for decades and had kept the lawns short in earlier days, did well to survive in the gardens for so long and managed to do a bit of pruning as well, but in places, opportunistic species such as silver birch had proliferated,” Adam says. Although a few escaped and have been spotted in local woodland reportedly - one with a joey in its pouch - the herd will once again become a familiar and beloved feature of Leonardslee - especially the albinos.
“This is a very special place,” Adam states. “Woodland gardens on this scale and diversity are rare, but the Rock Garden, for example, is exceptional.” With many Champion specimens recorded on the national tree register, Leonardslee enjoys a lengthy flowering season, starting with the towering magnolias, moving through to the camellia
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