Tucked between the bustle of modern-day Parktown and Johannesburg’ s business district lies a garden with a story. Towering oaks, jacaranda trees and flowering shrubs speak not only of nature but of memory – of a place where roots run deep in more ways than one.
This garden, part of the PPS head office today, was once the heart of a sprawling estate known as Loshoek. More than a century ago, it was the family home of Herbert Read, an Englishman who came to South Africa to work in the gold mining industry. Designed by the famed architect Sir Herbert Baker – best known for the Union Buildings – Loshoek was completed in 1902 and became a sanctuary of space, nature and quiet elegance on the edge of a rapidly expanding city.
In those early days, horses paced in nearby stables, children explored gravel paths and Anerley Road was little more than a quiet country lane. The garden, once barren, was carefully cultivated by Read and his wife, Lily Visser, who planted oak trees brought from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in the Cape and filled the grounds with oaks, a cherry tree, flowers and shrubs.
Some of those trees still stand today, living testaments to a family’ s care and vision. And though the original house has long since been demolished to make way for the PPS head office, the spirit of Loshoek lingers in the shade and the soil.
In 2025, Herbert Read’ s granddaughter, Biddy Miller, returned to the site to walk through the gardens her family once called home. As she moved beneath the same trees her grandfather and later her father, Edward Read, planted, she reflected on the passage of time and on how legacy – like nature – quietly endures.
Miller, now 78, stood quietly beneath the towering oaks – some so tall she could hardly recognise them from her childhood. As she walked the PPS campus, she pointed to the area where
A painting of Loshoek by Moses Tladi. the old stables once stood, long before the M1 motorway cut through the property. She remembered how her father had travelled to school by horse and trap, and how she and her brother would race their bicycles up and down Anerley Road.
“ Back then, that was the back of the house,” she said, glancing toward the presentday main entrance to PPS.“ Federation Road was the front – it stretched all the way to the south, not sliced off by the highway like it is now. It is strange how things change.”
Her voice softened as she recalled a moment that left a deep impression on her.“ I can still see my father standing at the edge of what used to be our garden when they started building the highway. He looked so forlorn. In many ways, the construction of the highway was the beginning of the end of Loshoek as we knew it.”
While the legacy of her family’ s home remains in the deep roots of the estate’ s trees, there is also sorrow for what has been lost. Her favourite cherry tree is no more, nor is a massive jacaranda she searched for all over campus, as it had toppled over after heavy rains and storms in early 2025. Yet, in honour of the past, PPS has committed to planting a new cherry tree – a small but meaningful act of sustainability, acknowledging that while buildings may come and go, nature endures.
Miller also remembers how the garden not only created a refuge for the Read family but offered an opportunity for someone whose life would change forever.
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