Nymans Gardens, one of the great gardens of the Sussex Weald and famous for its beauty and rare plants, was created by three generations of the Messel family. Now in the care of the National Trust, it attracts over l00,000 visitors a year. Visitors were inadequately served by an entrance building and a tea servery pavilion, designed by Philip Jebb in 1985, and a small classical hut, from which a few plants were sold. All these buildings were clad in painted timber with cedar shingle roofs.

The new facilities incorporate the existing entrance building and tea pavilion and provide an independent entrance building, a tea room and kitchens, a shop and external plant sales area and staff offices. The existing public lavatories in the car park, brick built and utilitarian, have been re-clad as a simple Doric amphiprostyle temple with a cedar shingle roof. The shop and staff buildings are simple sheds which will eventually be disguised by climbing plants. Both the interior of the shop and the fencing and the plant stands on the exterior were designed to fit in with the character of the scheme. The new octagonal entrance building has a straight front with projecting pilasters facing onto the car park. The interior has a cupola, a central roof light and a specially designed chandelier.

The tea room is the most unusual feature with a roof striped in blue and naturally patinated copper and topped with tall finials; the perimeter of the roof is scalloped, striped copper. These stripes are mirrored on the interior with a striped fabric ceiling.  A trellised colonnade and a canopy decorate the exterior entrance and inside the building the servery has a trellis decoration in the form of columns and festoons.