When it comes to “take it or leave it,” I can usually “leave” as regards rock gardens…until an English garden trip in 2023 left me speechless. Little did I know that the 19th century Italianate country house in Horsham, West Sussex we had chosen for our accommodations, with its 10 bespoke bedrooms each decorated by a roster of noted English designers (and that also boasted a Michelin-starred restaurant) was really a minor player in the overall scheme of things…

Set in 240 acres of private gardens, woodlands and lakes, Leonardslee is surrounded by grand scale landscaping in the truest sense of the word; generations of the Loder family are to be thanked for this. And The Rock Garden (Feature image), designed in 1890, is the Jewel in the Crown.

But this magnificent Grade I listed garden was nearly lost forever. Just a few years before we arrived, Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens opened its doors again after a closure of 10 years, the subject of the largest garden restoration in England. This included the rock garden, said to be the finest example of its type in southeast England.

A stunning example of ingenuity in landscape design and a tribute to the skills of James Pulham and Son, the eminent firm of Victorian and Edwardian landscape artists, remembered today for their picturesque rock gardens, ferneries, grottoes and follies. Master rock craftsmen of the 19th and early 20th centuries who designed for a long list of aristocratic estates.

And the little secret (or not so secret! ) of these great experts of their day? Their creations were constructed entirely from man-made rock; the firm having invented a durable substitute for real rocks that they called Pulhamite (so clever). God’s creations weren’t acceptable to these craftsmen who knew exactly what they wanted…and that is why they were called landscape artists!

It still defies belief…perfectly weathered as if by centuries of wind and rain, moss and lichen-covered, the strata looks entirely natural.

And then to be transported by the beauty and color of the plantings…many cultivars of azaleas, award-winning rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias, and exotic plantings, sheltered by well-established native oaks and champion trees of Britain and Ireland, as well as Japanese maples. In the late 1800s, passionate plantsman Sir Edmund Loder created his own Loderi hybrid rhododendron.

A substantial garden (that’s something of a sleeper) Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens is a good visit in any season. Treat yourself!