Even without the land sold to build Rhodes House in the 1920s, Wadham Gardens remain relatively large when compared with those of other Oxford colleges.  Originally a series of orchards and market-gardens carved out from the property of the Augustinian priory, their appearance and configuration have been significantly modified over the course of the last four hundred years in order to reflect their constantly-changing functional and aesthetic purpose.  

The land was shaped, in particular, by two major periods of planning.  Gardens were first created under Warden Wilkins (1648-59) as a series of formal rectangles laid out around a (then fashionable) mound which was, in turn, surmounted by a figure of Atlas.  These gardens were notable not least for their collection of mechanical contrivances (including a talking statue and a rainbow-maker), a number of obelisks and a Doric temple.  Under Warden Wills (1783-1806), the terrain was then radically remodelled and landscaped (by Shipley) and became notable for a distinguished collection of trees. 

Restored and reshaped following the Second World War, the present Gardens are divided into the Warden’s Garden, the Fellows’ Private Garden and the Fellows’ Garden, together with the Back Quad, the JCR Quad, the Cloister Garden (originally the cemetery), the White Scented Garden, and the two strips of land (now turfed) immediately in front of the College.  They are still notable for their collection of trees (specimens include a holm oak, silver pendent lime, tulip tree, golden yew, purple beech, cedar of Lebanon, gingko, giant redwood, tree of heaven, incense cedar, Corsican pine, magnolia and a rare Chinese gutta-percha) and they still contain a number of vestigial curiosities from the past (notably an eighteenth-century ‘cowshed’ set into the remnants of the Royalist earthworks of 1642, and a sculpture of Warden Bowra, not as Atlas, but Prometheus).  Otherwise, Wadham Gardens now represent a rather eclectic mélange, comprising a series of large lawns within a grand setting surrounded by more sheltered spaces and a number of mixed borders which include specimens of many fine and unusual plants.