Roedean’s heritage gardens are a true delight and a tribute to those who have worked tirelessly over many years to create and maintain the tranquil haven that forms the backdrop to the Sir Herbert Baker buildings of the campus.

“The Roedean garden has a special and most individual appeal: it is not formal nor is it wild but it is just right.”

So wrote Gwendolen Edwards in her tribute to one of Roedean’s founders, Katherine Margaret Earle, who began the school’s gardens as a surprise for co-founder Theresa Lawrence. 

“Although we have lost our personal contact with K.M.E.,” wrote Gwendolen, “there yet remains a comforting feeling of her presence in and about the school which she loved, laboured for and thought about for so long. I think that nowhere do we feel her presence more than in the garden which she planned and wrought, developing it from bare koppie to its present delight.”

The members of staff and the pupils of Roedean owe the ongoing splendour of these gardens to the creativity, tireless labour, imagination, and sheer devotion of the incomparable Anne Lorentz (6 May 1930 – 11 November 2010) who nurtured the school’s gardens for 35 years, building on the foundations laid by Katherine Margaret Earle and Gwendolen Edwards. She created a magnificent garden of botanical interest, a garden which ‘intertwines’ with Roedean’s long history.