She was educated at Swansea High School for Girls and then went to Somerville College, Oxford, where she received a first class honours degree in botany.

[1] After completing her degree, Wakefield was awarded a Gilchrist scholarship[2] and worked with Prof. Karl von Tubeuf in Munich, where she undertook cultural studies on the larger fungi, publishing her first paper there, in German.

On her return in 1910, she became assistant to George Massee, head of mycology and cryptogams at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

In 1920, she took advantage of a travelling scholarship from Somerville College[2] to spend six months working as a mycologist in the West Indies.

Subsequently, she remained at Kew until her retirement in 1951, working on British and tropical fungi, with a particular interest in corticioid and tomentelloid species.