WAKEHURST at Ardingly is welcoming a new catering company on January 4.

Graysons will take over the catering, wedding and venue hire services at Wakehurst, Kew’s wild botanic garden.

It will include a mix of newly introduced brunches, hot meals, all day hot snacks, healthy salads and lights meals, plus premium artisan coffee.

The focus will be both on introducing world flavours and exciting ingredients.

More traditional items will still be on the menu to ensure everyone is happy.

Director Tony Sweeney said bringing Graysons onboard was just one of many investments Wakehurst is making in its future.

Tony said: “Graysons is a great fit with the direction that Wakehurst is taking.

“There is a strong focus on the best of British seasonal food - prepared with fresh, locally sourced ingredients, presented imaginatively and healthily, with a strong emphasis on personal service.

“They are committed to ethical sourcing, sustainability social and environmental responsibility.”

Graysons will also undertake a design refresh of Wakehurst’s restaurant, the Stables and cafes – the Seed Café and Redwoods coffee shop during the coming months.

They will also provide pop-up catering in the woodlands during the summer months.

Catering and venue hire are run by Graysons at a number of high-profile cultural outlets including the British Library, the National Archives, the Francis Crick Institute and the Royal Overseas League.

They have staff-training links with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage. Graysons also have a menu-development partnership with Marcus Wareing’s award-winning Tredwells Restaurant in Covent Garden – whose Chef Patron Chantelle Nicholson is a leading light in the plant-based cookery movement.

Wakehurst, Kew’s wild botanic garden in the Sussex High Weald is one of the most beautiful and significant botanic gardens in the country.

It is home to Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, which houses and protects seed from the world’s most substantial and diverse collection of threatened and useful wild plants, and leads the MSB Partnership, a crucially important global science-based conservation programme which is the largest of its kind in the world.

The estate includes a contemporary botanic garden, where ornamental plantings and exotic tree and shrub collections of international importance sit within native woodland.