Southern Hemisphere Garden
Explore rare and wonderful plants from the Southern Hemisphere in this unique landscape made up of wild-collected plants.
Step into the Southern Hemisphere Gardens and be transported to a world of rare and wonderful plants.
The Southern Hemisphere Garden showcases the collections of plant hunter Harold Comber.
After training as a botanist in the 1920s, he was sent to Chile by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. Despite being 7,000 miles from home, Comber’s Chilean collections thrived, and it wasn’t long before his horizons expanded even further with an equally successful trip to Tasmania in the 1930s.
Today, the collection features rare and wonderful plants from the other side of the world including leatherwoods (Eucryphia), eucalyptus, bottlebrushes (Callistemon), the pineapple relative Fasicularia and tea tree (Leptospermum), the source of Manuka honey.
A peaceful pocket of Wakehurst, the Southern Hemisphere Gardens is an ideal spot to take a break and enjoy a picnic.
Find the Southern Hemisphere Garden at marker 23 on our Map of Wakehurst
Many of the plants in the Southern Hemisphere Garden evolved when the Southern Hemisphere was one giant land mass (Gondwana), before South America and Australasia separated. Look out for similarities between plants now separated by huge oceans.
Designed landscapes
This is one of our designed landscapes, where Wakehurst begins to get dramatic and wild. In these areas, we use wild collected plants arranged by country. The system is called phytogeographic planting – offering a chance to travel the world in the heart of Sussex.
Discover more of Wakehurst
American Prairie
Pinetum
.jpg.webp?itok=ZLf2mOD_ "Coronation Meadow at Wakehurst")
Coronation Meadow
.jpg.webp?itok=yUNMOtIr "Mansion Gardens, Ellen McHale © RBG Kew")