patiently raised this from 14 Viburnum betulifolium seed, planting it out when it This viburnum was introduced was young and better able to in 1907 by the famous establish in the tough, chalky hunter, Ernest Henry Wilson. soil. The seeds were a gift from Dripping in translucent scarlet his friend, George Johnstone, berries which weigh down the another avid plant collector who George Forrest, turned up in the branches, Stern observed it as developed the famous gardens Plant hunter’s trail village. Farrer fired off an angry a magnificent sight in October. of Trewithen in Cornwall. Stern’s telegram, asking Forrest to Like many of the trees and patience was rewarded when move his collectors elsewhere. at Highdown, Stern many years later, in 1957, this Forrest replied he could not was awarded a First Class recall them. Sadly, Farrer died Certificate by the RHS. alone in only a year later and this cotoneaster 15 Cotoneaster sternianus was one of the few successful This cotoneaster was found finds from his final expedition. near Pianma in 1919 by the Frederick Stern admired its plant hunter, Reginald Farrer, on profusion of scarlet-orange his last and ill-fated expedition berries in September and the to Myanmar. A week into his plant is named in his honour. stay at Pianma, a team of collectors working for his rival, Cover photo: Paeonia rockii

For more information on the Text: Annelise Brilli. Asian Reginald Farrer image by kind history of Highdown Gardens, geography and translations by permission of the Farrer family. Sir Frederick and Lady Sybil Stern Andy West. (costume) and the important conservation Sources: A Chalk Garden by work being carried out in the Photos: Highdown Gardens: Annelise Brilli/Steve Speller Sir Frederick Stern; Stern’s plant Garden visit the website index cards at West Sussex Record Office; the Stern archive at Royal highdowngardens.co.uk All historical images courtesy of West Sussex Record Office, and Botanical Gardens, Kew.

@highdowngardens @highdowngardens @highdowngardens C h a l k c l i ‚ Upper Garden Millennium The Chalk Pit Garden Picnic area

Visitor Centre Car park Sensory Garden

The Beech Walk

Middle Garden The Highdown Greenhouse restaurant & tea rooms Raised acid beds Ponds Wheelchair accessible N Performance No access Lower area Garden

0 10 20 30m

0 25 50 75 100 feet Highdown plant hunter’s Trail C h a l k c l i ‚ Upper Garden Millennium ‘The garden at Highdown was made as an The Chalk Pit Garden Picnic area experiment to see what would grow on the 15 chalk soil of the Downs’. 11 12 GL 14 Visitor Fn Sir Frederick Stern (Royal Horticultural Society Journal, March 1967) Centre 13 Car park Sensory Garden

C h a l The Beech The Experiment k C h a l c l i ‚ Walk Upper Garden Sir Frederick and Lady Sybil k c l i Millennium C h a l ‚ UpperThe1 Chalk Garden Pit Stern made a huge investment k Garden C h a l c l i ‚ Upper Garden Millennium Picnic area in their obsession for growing k The Chalk Pit c l i Millennium Garden Picnic area C h a l ‚ The UpperChalk PitGarden from 1909 to 1967. They k 2 Garden3 Middle c l i ‚ Millennium Picnic area The ChalkUpper Pit Garden joined collectors’ syndicates Garden Garden Visitor Millennium 10 Picnic area The Highdown Greenhouse The Chalk Pit Visitor Centre to hire plant hunters to go Garden Picnic area restaurant & tea roomsCar park Sensory GardenCentre Raised acid beds on dangerous collecting Postcard from Stern to Visitor Car park Sensory Garden Centre Ponds expeditions around the J. Stevenson, 1930 Visitor Car park Sensory Garden Centre Wheelchair accessible world. They became part of Visitor TheCar Beech park N Performance Sensory Garden Centre W9alk 4 No access a global network of wealthy it was a risky job for the plant The Beech Car park Lower area Sensory Garden collectors, plant nurseries, hunters and their local teams; The Beech Walk Garden 5 botanical gardens, missionaries, walking in hobnailed boots up The Beech Walk Walk 6 diplomats, shipping agents, to 4,500 metres (15,000The Beech feet) Middle8 7 Walk plant hunters and hill peoples. and facing extreme weather, Middle Garden The Highdown Greenhouse 0 10 20 30m The Sterns also purchased and deadly insects, blood thirsty Middle Garden restaurant & tea roomsGreenhouse Raised acid beds Garden The Highdown swapped thousands of seeds leeches and civil unrest. The Middle restaurant & tea rooms 0 25 50 75 100 feet The Highdown Greenhouse Raised acid beds Ponds and cuttings. Sir Frederick Stern other risk was that manyMiddle seeds Garden restaurant & tea rooms Greenhouse Raised acid beds Garden The Highdown Ponds Wheelchair accessible even created a laboratory in the collected did not survive the restaurant & tea rooms The HighdownN Greenhouse Raised acid beds PondsPerformance Wheelchair accessible No access wine cellar of Highdown Tower NReginald Farrerrestaurant in bizarre & tea costume, rooms Lower area RaisedGarden acid beds PerformancePonds Wheelchair accessibleNo access to count plant chromosomes. N c.1910 Lower area Garden PondsPerformance Wheelchair accessible No access He shared his experiences in N Lower area These fast-growing, scree slopes. Their tiny seeds, like Garden Performance MIDDWheelchairLE GAR accessibleDEN No access public lectures and hisN book Lower ship journey back to Britain. area opportunistic shrubs colonise ground pepper, are wind-blown Garden Performance 1 BuddlejaNo access farreri A Chalk Garden. Lower Today, as climate changearea poor, thinly soiled, terrain, to great distances, popping Garden 0 10 20 30m increases, the living library of When Reginald Farrer found this growing naturally in forest up in the most unlikely and 0 10 20 30m Highdown Gardens contains Buddleja in Gansu in 1914, he clearings, stream banks and on seemingly 0inhospitable25 50 75 100 places. feet 0 10 20 30m The Plant hunters rare ‘mother’ plants whose observed it as the pride of the 0 25 50 75 100 feetThese characteristics make 0 10 20 30m seeds are being preserved blazing rocks and cliffs about 0 25 50 75 100 feet buddlejas ideal shrubs for In this trail many of the plants 0 10 20 30m you will discover were collected for future generations at the the sun-baked villages. Its0 25 50 75 100 feet chalk and Stern obtained seed in the mountains of West Millennium Seed Bank. soft-felted,0 25 white50 75 leaves100 feet are an from many Chinese . by plant hunter Ernest Wilson adaptation to these conditions, Unlike the familiar Buddleja and horticultural writer Reginald Enjoy the trail and give reflecting sunlight and trapping davidii or ‘Butterfly bush’ grown Farrer. By modern standards, yourself 45 minutes to moisture in its fine hairs. It commonly in gardens, these plant hunters of the past could wander around. flourishes in this south facing, buddlejas flower on older be regarded as eco-pirates, sun-baked border, bearing wood, and so any pruning must stealing from local people and Ernest Wilson at the Arnold lightly scented lilac flowers in be carried out directly after their environment. However, Arbortem 1929 taken by Stern late spring. flowering. swap Stern had with collectors on Highdown’s chalk. This Morgan who grew them from *Chinese attempts to resist Dorothy and John Renton exceptional lilac is a hybrid of seeds found by plant hunter the British introducing and of Branklyn Garden in Perth, obscure parentage. Grown in in Gansu, China in enforcing sale of opium in Scotland. the gardens of ancient Persia 1925. ‘Constantia’ seeds came China. Peonies are deeply (modern Iran) it was introduced from thanks to diplomat embedded in Chinese culture to Europe in the 17th century. and leading amateur jockey 8 Cornus kousa var. 2 Abelia triflora and have been cultivated in With its delicate foliage and Hugh Lloyd Thomas. During the chinensis Eastern Gardens for at least profuse airy panicles of scented 1950s Stern won the Award of 7 Clerodendrum Although little is known about 2000 years, long before they pale lilac flowers in May it Merit for his ‘Mrs George Warre’ trichotomum var. fargesii its provenance, this Abelia is were ‘discovered’ by the Western deserves a place in every chalk and ‘Cassandra’ peonies at the one of Highdown’s most striking A native of China and Japan, explorers who gave them their garden. Chelsea Flower Show. Stern veteran shrubs and must have the exotic flowers and fruit names. They were originally enjoyed growing them but had been an early acquisition by of this beautiful shrub belie used by the Emperors of China 5 Paeonia suffruticosa to be patient as they took at Frederick Stern dating from its tough nature. Blooming in as symbols of their wealth least five years to grow them the first half of the 20th late summer when most other and power. This species was from seed. century. A native of North West shrubs have finished, it bears named after Père Jean-Marie Himalayas, it is likely to be an airy clusters of sweetly scented Delavay, one of many 19th 6 Pittosporum tenuifolium original, wild seed collection. flowers emerging from pink century French missionaries Its high canopy exposes a Although Pittosporums are now buds folded like origami. These who combined religion with mass of muscular limbs with ubiquitous in suburban front are followed by impressive plant-hunting. It is threatened striking ridged bark. In summer gardens, when Stern planted starry fruits, composed of outer in its native habitat due to over- it bears a profusion of white his first specimen in the Chalk crimson lobes with contrasting collection for medicinal use. Pit in 1912, they were relatively centres of a stunning turquoise flowers flushed with pink which Introduced by Wilson from unknown plants with unproven blue. The chemical composition are delicately scented. Not China in 1907, Cornus kousa hardiness. Stern was delighted of this startling plant pigment is often seen in gardens this var. chinensis is one of the best LOWER GARDEN to discover that these elegant, totally unique to Clerodendrum old Abelia is still thriving in Cornus to grow and an excellent 4 evergreen shrubs from New trichotomum and it was once Highdown’s tough chalk and Syringa x persica var. tree for small gardens, providing Zealand were cold tolerant, used to dye clothes. it deserves to be more widely laciniata year-round interest. This even pulling through the In Japan its name translates grown. Stern’s plant collection included specimen is a re-introduction terrible winter of 1952/53. He as ‘Stinking Tree’, due to the many lilac species and cultivars. by Worthing Council staff. propagated numerous seedlings pungent smell of the crushed 3 Paeonia delavayi In the wild these tough In early summer, its elegant, from the original tree and used leaves. Although we do not In front of you is a group of shrubs grow on hillsides and lateral branches are covered in these to create the long hedge know where Stern obtained red Paeonia delavayi. These mountains, enjoying freely showy white bracts which fade This dazzling flower emerges which divides the middle and these plants, collections were are part of a 1950s seed drained conditions and thriving to pink. The central ‘button’ as large ball shaped petals lower garden. made in the 1890s by Père Paul which contains the true flowers, in May with a spectrum of Farges, a French missionary in develop into an attractive pink to crimson at the petal China after whom the plant strawberry-like fruit and are base. They can be found in was named. It was these French accompanied by beautiful the Lower Garden amongst missionaries, sent to China in autumn foliage. the herbaceous borders. Stern the aftermath of the Opium grew several paeonia using Wars,* who first explored the 9 seeds donated to him and then Chinese interior and whose Rosa ‘Wedding Day’ developed as hybrids. Some discoveries caused a sensation On 26th June 1919 Frederick of the first Highdownpeaonia amongst Western plant Stern married Sybil Lucas at the seeds came from Canadian collectors. West London Synagogue. Sybil plant collector F. Cleveland was well-educated wilsonii and Rosa moyesii which In 1908 Wilson brought back fortuitously flowered on the day seed of this Hydrangea aspera. of their wedding anniversary Stern discovered that this was and he immediately named it one of the few Hydrangeas ‘Wedding Day’. This is a to flourish on the dry, alkaline vigorous and floriferous rambler chalk and self-seeded plants and independently minded, brunonii scrambling over which is covered with scented have proliferated around the enjoying her husband’s passion the tops of trees and scrub, white flowers emerging from Chalk Pit. These large shrubs are for gardening and pursuing her smothering steep-sided valleys apricot coloured buds and particularly valued for their late own interests in art and politics. with a spectacular show of turning pinkish with age. It has summer flowers bearing large She joined the Union of Jewish scented white flowers, just as it self-seeded prolifically about flat heads of lilac florets. Women and was involved does here in June and July over the garden. with Liberal party suffragists one hundred years later. 12 in the 1928 campaign to raise Rosa brunonii: The awareness of women’s suffrage. Himalayan Musk Rose CHALK PIT During the Second World War Queen Mary in 1937, Highdown Visitors Book In 1914 the plant hunter, upper garden she became a senior officer in 10 Carpinus turczaninowii Reginald Farrer, and his weeping branches hold delicate From 1906 Wilson worked 13 Euonymus grandiflorus Worthing Women’s Voluntary colleague, William Purdom, set When Stern sowed a packet foliage which turns shades of for the Arnold Arboretum in Services. She also worked as off from Beijing on the trip of of unknown tree seeds from orange in the autumn. Boston who instructed him a Worthing magistrate for a lifetime to North West China. Farrer’s 1915–15 expedition to increase the knowledge of thirty years. Farrer’s trip was the first plant only one of the seeds the woody plants of China. As a testament to their hunting expedition which Stern germinated. That precious On one of these trips Wilson happy marriage, Stern named sponsored and inspired his life- seedling is this tree, making narrowly escaped a huge rock several of his plant hybrids long association with the most it around 105 years old. With fall on a narrow pass and broke after her, including: Galanthus important plant hunters of the a girth of 2.10m it is now his leg in two places. Lying elwesii ‘Sybil Stern’ and Paeonia 20th century. registered as a Champion Tree. across the path, his mules had ‘Sybil’. In 1950 Stern bred The eccentric Farrer was a Many of the seeds which to be walked over him as the a hybrid cross of Rosa sino- Buddhist convert and Jane Stern received arrived path was too narrow for the Austen fanatic who frequently only with a collector’s animals to be turned around. dressed up in Chinese robes. Frederick and Lady Sybil Stern number and he had This accident left him hobbling outside Highdown Tower, 1954 A frustrated novelist, he to wait until 1930 around on a shortened right leg poured his literary ambitions These grand trees started life when this tree was for the rest of his life. identified by the into his lively botanical prose, as two tiny cuttings which 11 curator of Kew Gardens, William Hydrangea aspera transforming the genre of Stern obtained in 1934 Bean. A few years later Stern ‘Villosa Group’ garden writing forever. following the death of Vicary managed to propagate this Ernest Wilson was one of the Pause for a moment to Gibbs, a wealthy financier, MP tree and a young sapling was foremost collectors of Chinese imagine Farrer traversing the and owner of a celebrated planted by Queen Mary on her flora. He began his plant hills of North West China on arboretum which has now been visit to Highdown in 1937, see collecting career working for his pony ‘Spotted Fat’. His view lost. Stern was justly proud to photo above. You can find this the famous Veitch nurseries may not have been that far receive an Award of Merit for younger tree still growing on who provided Stern with some removed from Highdown’s them in 1953. In autumn they the other side of the Middle of his first plant acquisitions Chalk Pit; he even described are covered in beautiful, pink, Garden. and inspired his passion for the the uplands of Gansu province four-lobed fruit which open to Stern described this as the new plant introductions coming as ‘like glorified Lewes Downs’. reveal black seeds resting on a finest at Highdown. Its elegant, from western China. Farrer would have seen Rosa scarlet base.