| Dates | 14 October 2027 to 17 October 2027 |
| Location | Surrey Arboreta & Gardens |
| Tour organiser | Sarah Webster |
| Difficulty rating | Level 2: Easy with mostly longer walks, and occasional uneven ground |
| Max. participants | 30 |
Send to: Sarah Webster
Send to: Sarah Webster
Send to: Sarah Webster
An easily accessible tour from London, Heathrow and Gatwick, featuring world-renowned arboreta and gardens.
Perhaps surprisingly, given its proximity to London and other major population centres, Surrey is one of England’s most heavily wooded counties. It is home to some of the country’s most internationally significant arboreta and botanical tree collections, which benefit from the acidic, sandy soils. We are very fortunate to have as our guide for the tour Jack Aldridge, the newly appointed Horticultural Curator of The Royal Parks, and on the final day we will be joined by Dr Owen Johnson.
The tour lasts three and a half days, beginning at midday on Thursday 14 October with a visit to the Ranger’s House garden beside Farnham Castle. Over the following three days, we will visit Ramster, a unique woodland garden, and Winkworth Arboretum, founded in 1938 by Dr Wilfred Fox, who designed the landscape with the vision of 'planting with trees'. The highlight will be a visit to the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley.
Surrey, like much of the country, has been affected by excessively dry, hot summers, and we will consider how to plant for the future.
We will be staying at the Bush Hotel, a historic coaching inn in the centre of Farnham. Parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis at a daily cost of £5. The Bush Hotel is easily accessible and is a 10-minute walk from Farnham Station, which is just under an hour by train from London Waterloo. Farnham therefore has excellent rail links with Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Please consider car sharing where feasible, as parking at the hotel is limited and costs £5 per day or night.
The Bush Hotel in Farnham
Arrival and the Ranger’s House
Please arrive by midday at the Bush Hotel, Farnham GU9 7NN. Lunch will be served at 1pm at the Ranger’s House, Farnham Park GU9 0AB.
Members can leave their luggage at the Bush Hotel and walk through the town. They will be accompanied from the hotel by Andrew Fleming at 12.30pm, who is kindly hosting us for lunch. Members will walk up beautiful Castle Street and across the park, viewing the ancient pollarded oaks and sweet chestnut. The walk will take approximately 20 minutes; alternatively, members may drive directly to the Ranger’s House in Farnham Park. This is the home of IDS members Andrew and Lucinda. Lunch will be served at 1pm.
Farnham Park © Thames Basin Heaths
The Ranger’s House was built in the late seventeenth century for the ranger of Farnham Park and served as a hunting lodge for the bishops of Winchester. The park had been created by William of Wykeham in 1376 as a private deer park for Farnham Castle, which served as a residence for the bishops.
The grounds of the Ranger’s House were remodelled as a pleasure garden in the 1790s by Bishop Brownlow North, who, along with his wife Henrietta, had a strong interest in botany; he was a Fellow of the Linnean Society. This late eighteenth-century makeover included a programme of tree planting.
Today, eight magnificent cedars of Lebanon, a swamp cypress, a turkey oak and a huge Lucombe oak (in TROBI) are still thriving from the original planting. In recent decades, a scheme to replant the cedars, in particular from seed from the original trees, has been undertaken. However, a larger programme of underplanting the big specimens with understory trees has suffered badly from recent droughts, so the garden is having to be rethought.
Dr Roy Waight, the local Farnham historian, will give us a brief history of Farnham Castle and, possibly, a tour of the castle.
Welcome drinks will be served at 6.30pm, followed by dinner at the Bush Hotel.
Overnight: Bush Hotel, Farnham GU9 7NN
Ramster Garden and Winkworth Arboretum
Breakfast
The coach departs at 9.30am for Ramster and, in the afternoon, Winkworth Arboretum.
We will first visit Ramster Garden in Chiddingfold. We will be accompanied by Rosie Glaister, whose family have long been IDS members and have created the beautiful gardens at Ramster.
Ramster is a magnificent 25-acre peaceful woodland garden, celebrated for its 100-year history of structural planting. Alongside famous rhododendrons, it features a very large collection of specimen trees and mature acers.
Ramster Garden © Great British Gardens.co.uk
In 1922, the estate was bought by Sir Henry and Lady Norman. Lady Norman was the daughter of Lord Aberconway and had lived at Bodnant. Ramster was among the first gardens to open for the NGS in 1927 and is one of only two to have opened continuously ever since. Ant Wood is home to the Hardy Hybrid Rhododendrons Collection, comprising over 200 different varieties.
Lunch at Ramster
Winkworth Arboretum
After lunch, the coach will take us to Winkworth Arboretum. Winkworth Arboretum is the National Trust’s premier dedicated landscape arboretum. It contains an internationally significant collection of more than 1,000 different species of trees, as well as over 100 champion trees.
The landscape painted by trees as Dr Fox envisioned. Winkworth Arboretum © National Trust Images / Andrew Butler
It is renowned for its vast selection of Japanese maples, liquidambars and scarlet oaks. The 95-acre arboretum was founded by Dr Wilfred Fox in 1938. He continued to develop it throughout the Second World War and presented it to the National Trust in 1952.
On our return journey, we will stop at Hampton Estate for tea and a discussion about how the estate is adapting to climate change.
Dinner at 7pm at a local restaurant
RHS Garden Wisley and Waverley Abbey
Breakfast
The coach departs at 9.30am for an all-day tour of RHS Garden Wisley, where we will have lunch.
We will spend the day at Wisley and are fortunate to be guided by Jack Aldridge, who recently left his post there. He was initially responsible for Oakwood, the historic four-acre woodland garden that marks the origins of RHS Wisley. Jack led the team responsible for the Rock Garden and Alpine Meadow, as well as national collections of alpines and bulbs. He is widely recognised as a horticultural specialist in woody ornamental plants and is a contributing author for TSO.
RHS Garden Wisley. Seven Acres with Ginkgo biloba and Metasequoia glyptostroboides by the Lake © RHS / Jason Ingram
The Alpine Meadow at RHS Garden Wisley © RHS / Neil Hepworth
Autumn-coloured leaves on an Nyssa sylvatica ‘Wisley Bonfire’, at RHS Garden Wisley © RHS / Oliver Dixon
Wisley covers 240 acres and encompasses the best of British gardening. Wisley is the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society. Its arboretum features an exceptional collection packed with rare champion and mature specimen trees. It is also a vital hub for tree trial research and conservation.
Waverley Abbey
On returning to Farnham, we will briefly stop at Waverley Abbey, built by Cistercian monks in the early thirteenth century, to view the Waverley Abbey yew: a striking, multi-stemmed ancient tree growing directly out of the abbey’s stone ruins.
Waverley Abbey © Colin Smith / Wikimedia CC BY SA 2.0
Following drinks at 6.30pm, there will be a final dinner at the Bush Hotel.
After dinner, Belinda Knox will give a light-hearted talk on outstanding Surrey trees.
Sarum and the University of Surrey Campus Arboretum
Breakfast
The coach departs at 9.30am.
On our last day, we will visit Sarum in Worplesdon, the home of Roderick and Mary White. Rod is an enthusiast for trees and has a love of, and knowledge of, species rhododendrons, conifers and their cultivars, camellias and ericaceous plants. He has a particular interest in preserving long-standing collections of plants and their associated records.
The owners moved the majority of their previous garden to this space in 1997. They have been adding to it ever since, replanting and digging out where necessary as space has become limited.
Lunch in Guildford Cathedral’s refectory.
Afternoon
University of Surrey Campus Arboretum, Guildford. Early in the university’s development, the 33-hectare Stag Hill campus was designed as an arboretum. Today, it curates a collection of more than 300 distinct tree species, totalling around 1,500 specimens.
University of Surrey Stag Hill campus, Guildford © University of Surrey
We will be accompanied by Dr Owen Johnson, who has catalogued the collection, and former curator Simon Smith, who was the horticultural curator for 40 years. Iain Main, the Landscape Manager for Surrey University, will explain the challenges of managing a university site that is constantly open, and Simon will highlight the pressures of coping with climate change in the arboretum.
We will return to the Bush Hotel in Farnham by 4pm, marking the end of the official tour.
For those travelling onwards who wish to stay on Sunday night, the additional cost, payable on departure, will be £140 for single bed and breakfast or £150 for two people sharing a double room. Dinner is available for £30 per person.
Jack Aldridge
Jack Aldridge has very recently been appointed as the first Horticultural Curator of The Royal Parks. This is a newly created role aimed at strengthening horticultural excellence across its eight historic parks. In 2025, Jack received the Roy Lancaster Award, which recognises individuals aged 35 or under who have made an exceptional contribution to horticulture. He serves on the RHS Woody Plant Expert Group and is a trustee of the White House Farm Arboretum Trust.
Dr Owen Johnson
Dr Owen Johnson is a British dendrologist. He has studied and recorded over 60,000 trees around Britain and has developed skills in field identification. He is a Registrar at the Tree Register, where he has compiled and written Champion Trees of Britain and Ireland (2003), The Sussex Tree Book (1998), and the Collins Tree Guide. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, and in 2020 he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society.
| Location | Surrey Arboreta & Gardens |
| Tour dates, arrival | Thursday 14 October 2027 |
| Tour dates, departure | Sunday 17 October 2027 |
| Tour organiser | Sarah Webster |
| Availability | The tour is restricted to 30 participants |
| Accessibility | Walking difficulty and access: 2 |
| Weather | In mid-October, Surrey experiences cool autumn weather, with average daytime highs of around 15°C to 16°C. |
| Travel | Farnham is easily accessible by train from London Waterloo in just under an hour and has good transport links to Heathrow and Gatwick airports. |
| Tour costs | £750 per person (based on two people sharing) A deposit of £300 per person will be payable by 1 March 2027. |
| What’s included? | All accommodation and meals for three nights, including wine with dinner and pre-dinner drinks on two nights, daily transport, scheduled excursions, and tips. |
| What’s not included? | Dinner, bed and breakfast on Sunday 17 October, if required. Personal Insurance. |
