Celebrating Haywards Heath

  Regularly enjoying walks - even in rain and snow - through the water gardens at Wakehurst Place where, for a price, you can be guaranteed foot hold on flat solid paths. An early 20th century creation, including woodland and wetland conservation areas, the extensive gardens are owned by the National Trust but managed by Kew who run Wakehurst’s Millennium Seed Bank (2000). The Bank collects and conserves seeds from all of the UK's native flora and much of the world's flora to save species from extinction in the wild. The gardens, among the largest in the UK at 490 acres, thankfully continue to welcome visitors taking the exercise allowed in lockdown.   A short drive or bus journey from Haywards Heath, Wakehurst Place contains exciting items like this Australian ‘dinosaur tree’ alias Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) seen in 200 million year old fossils but believed to be extinct. In 1994 a ranger came across the pine abseiling 600 metres down into a gorge in Australia’s Wollemi N