Kew’s wild botanic garden in the High Weald has redesigned its summer, with new family trails and play stations during the day, followed by Latehurst, a brand-new after-hours programme of concerts, wine walks and silent discos as the sun begins to set.
Botanic gardens tend to keep office hours. Arrive mid-morning, admire responsibly and be gone by six. This July, Wakehurst, Kew’s 535-acre wild botanic garden in the Sussex High Weald, is quietly tearing up that curfew.
Latehurst, a new after-hours programme running every Thursday, Friday and Saturday throughout the month, keeps the gates open into the evening and turns the lawns in front of the Elizabethan Mansion into a stage for jazz, swing, opera and classical music, along with the occasional silent disco and wine walk.
The Thursday sessions offer a gentle introduction. On 2, 9, 16 and 23 July, the gardens stay open until 9pm for Garden Lates, with normal admission and free entry for members and children under four. There is no programme to follow, which is rather the point. Visitors can wander further into the woodlands, linger in the evening sun by the mansion and watch the meadows take on their golden-hour glow.
Fridays and Saturdays are where the programme fills out. The Mansion Concerts open on 3 July with the music of Bridgerton, as The L’Inviti String Quartet gives chart hits by Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande a rich, cinematic string treatment.
The following night brings Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, performed by the Sussex String Quartet and friends and hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenter and BBC Proms host Ian Skelly. He will guide the audience through each season, drawing on Harmony, the book he co-authored with King Charles III and Tony Juniper. Not every garden concert comes with a royal bibliography.
The second concert weekend swaps pop for prose. On 10 July, actor Nina Wadia OBE, soprano Claire Booth and pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen perform a celebration of Jane Austen. Scripted by Christine Croshaw, the performance is told through the surviving letters between Jane and her sister Cassandra, woven together with music by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, alongside folk melodies from the period.
The following night is devoted to opera. Soprano Sofia Kirwan-Baez, tenor Thomas Elwin and baritone Patrick Alexander Keefe, whose credits span English National Opera, Glyndebourne and Opera North, perform arias and classics from Puccini to Verdi, accompanied by pianist Chad Vindin.
Then things get thirstier. The Wakehurst Wine Walk on 17 July begins with a glass of English sparkling wine in front of the mansion, followed by a self-guided amble through the gardens. Along the route, visitors can pause at tasting points where Artelium wine hosts will pour, with cheese provided by High Weald Dairy.
As this is the Henry Moore edition, an art guide will also be on hand. The gardens currently double as an open-air gallery for Henry Moore and More, organised in partnership with the Henry Moore Foundation and running until September. The exhibition brings four of Moore’s monumental sculptures into the landscape, alongside contemporary commissions from Paloma Varga Weisz, Rafael Perez Evans and Rana Begum.
The silent disco on 18 July comes in two strengths. The family session, running from 3pm to 5.30pm, is aimed at toddlers through to primary-aged children and their grown-ups, with familiar tunes and plenty of room to dance.
The adult session, from 7pm to 10pm, allows guests to switch channels between throwback favourites, current hits and dance classics under the stars.
July closes with Mansion Jazz. On 24 July, seven-piece band Joie de Vivre blends bossa nova, Latin jazz and reworked favourites. On 25 July, Claire Martin, considered one of Britain’s leading jazz vocalists, arrives with her quintet to reinterpret songs associated with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan. She will be joined by Ronnie Scott’s all-star saxophonist Alex Garnett.
Daylight, meanwhile, belongs to families. Wakehurst has redesigned its summer offer around its Nature Connectedness research, marking the fifth anniversary of the Nature Unlocked programme. The programme uses the landscape as a living laboratory to study how biodiversity supports mental and physical wellbeing.
“This year will bring something brand new for Wakehurst,” says Eva Owen, the garden’s public engagement manager. “We’ve redesigned our family offer, shaping it around our Nature Connectedness research, ensuring that each event offers a moment for visitors of all ages to forge their own relationship with the natural world.”
In practice, this means a new family Explorer Map for plotting your own route, a dinosaur trail, a Barky Bark guide filled with tree facts and new explore-and-play stations appearing across the landscape from July.
The Wild Wood sculpture trail has also been refreshed with new woven wildlife hidden throughout the native woodland, including a red kite overhead. The Children’s & Community Garden still features the Mud Kitchen, where messy play is not only tolerated but actively encouraged and equipped.
The science is never far away. Wakehurst is home to Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, the world’s largest store of wild seeds. This summer, its Atrium gains a virtual AI scientist ready to answer questions ranging from “what is the smallest seed?” to “could seeds survive in space?”
Free Atrium tours take place on Mondays at 2pm. Until September, visitors can also join the Trees for Bees study by counting pollinators and uploading sightings through an app. The findings will help scientists inform pollinator-friendly planting in urban areas. Citizen science, with meadows.
The meadows themselves are also back, reopening for summer in a sea of native flowers and grasses. Beyond them are towering North American redwoods, Australian Wollemi pines with a lineage stretching back to the dinosaurs and the UK’s first American Prairie.
Should the weather turn, the Grade I listed mansion offers exhibitions, an interactive Billiard Room and a cosy library where visitors can rest weary legs.
Getting there is easier too. Metrobus has added a new Sunday service on the 272, meaning Wakehurst is now accessible by bus every day of the week. Visitors arriving by bus or train receive 50% off entry.
Latehurst runs every Thursday, Friday and Saturday in July. Early bird tickets are available at kew.org/wakehurst/whats-on/latehurst, with Mansion Concerts from £33.66, or £28.71 for members, and the silent disco from £21.78, or £18.81 for members.
Wakehurst is open from 10am to 6pm, with last entry at 5.30pm. Admission costs £18.50 for adults, £9.25 for young people aged 17 to 25 and £4 for children aged 5 to 16. Children under four and members enter free, while £1 concession tickets are also available.
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