The Gardens of Lincoln's Inn, Central London

Although it is in the heart of London, much of the 11 acres that make up Lincoln’s Inn is actually green space. As well as the parkland of the North Gardens, the oldest of London's four inns of court contains smaller ornamental areas, such as the more intimate Kitchen Garden, and the manicured lawn of New Square. Below the red brick Great Hall, the restored Benchers’ Border features yew topiary cones, and a red, yellow and orange colour scheme.  Surrounded by historic legal buildings, the gardens, which are largely open to the public on weekdays, are also home to some venerable old trees.

Emmetts Garden, Ide Hill, Kent

 

A National Trust property perched on a lush hillside, Emmetts Garden is awash with colour in early May. As well as being packed with horticultural attractions, this six acre Edwardian estate has commanding views across the North Downs.

Botanical Gardens of Lisbon

Built on a steep hillside near the heart of Lisbon, the nineteenth century Botanical Gardens are a calm and lush oasis of exotic greenery featuring thousands of subtropical species. Although the gardens are a tad shabby and overgrown, there are many quirky corners, the hard landscaping is tasteful and the atmosphere peaceful. If you have any interest in botany, a visit is well worth the modest entrance fee.

The Waterloo Festival, St. John's Church, Waterloo, Central London

There were some quirky and eye-catching exhibits in the 2018 Waterloo Festival, which is hosted in and around St. John's Church.

San Francisco Botanical Garden, The Golden Gate Park, California

With adult admission of $8, San Francisco Botanical Garden is one of the most reasonably-priced of the city's many attractions. It is also one of the most relaxing. A series of themed gardens take you on a botanical tour of much of the world, while a sprinkling of handsome mature trees provide shade from the summer sun. It is also pleasingly uncrowded, allowing you to sprawl out on the expansive lawn.

Hampton Court Flower Show, South West London

Although it is run by the distinguished Royal Horticultural Society, Hampton Court Flower Show feels quite commercial, with the generally small show gardens overwhelmed by the numerous stalls selling all kinds of garden paraphernalia. There are also numerous food and drink kiosks, but their fare is expensive and service can be agonisingly slow. Still, you should find some creative ideas and colourful planting, if you can battle your way through the crowds. The marquees, which can be very crowded on the Saturday of the event, are particularly wearing. Soon, you'll need to find a deck chair where you can soak up the sun and the free entertainment. The energetic live music performances make for a fun break from weaving your way through the hordes of middle aged and elderly visitors. And the setting, with the long lake and the distant backdrop of Hampton Court Palace, is undoubtedly picturesque.  Better still, you get to walk back to the station through Hampton Court Palace, which is a real bonus. Ironically, the palace's gardens are both more beautiful and in better condition than many of the temporary offerings at the Show.

Hampton Court Palace and Gardens, South West London

RHS Wisley in Flower in July, Surrey

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France

One of the nine themed gardens at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, an early 20th century country house on the French Riviera. 

Ightham Mote, Ivy Hatch, Sevenoaks, Kent

Andy Murray made Wimbledon finals day a fine time to visit this popular National Trust property, which can get over-run on a Sunday. When the middle classes are glued to the TV, there is room to breathe and admire the flashy flowers in the verdant grounds of this moated medieval manor house. Even in glorious sunshine, only a handful of visitors may be chilling out on the banked lawn, while a couple of families eat leisurely picnics on the banks of the brook that threads its way through the gardens. On the marked walks from the car park, you may not encounter another soul.

Claremont Landscape Garden, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey

Although the National Trust says Claremont Landscape Garden is of national importance, the lay visitor may find it hard to get excited. The eighteenth century landscaping is undoubtedly impressive, but Claremont isn't that large (at 49 acres) or that varied. One side of it is dominated by a lake, complete with a small island and stone pavilion, swans, ducks, geese and their droppings, surrounded by patches of woodland and open grass. There are some fine old trees and some atmospheric paths up and down the hillsides, but the garden isn't big enough for a satisfying walk and you can hear the hum of traffic on the nearby A-road. The grassy amphitheatre is cordoned off so children can't hurtle up and down its inviting tiers. Still, it is worth taking the back route up to the top for an elevated view of the lake and across to the the eighteenth century Belvedere Tower. The tower is generally closed and the original Claremont House is now an independent school, so there isn't that much to see. But children will like the substantial and solid wooden playground, with its mini castle, and the tea room serves some fine cakes. Claremont Landscape Garden is just about worth the standard six pound admission charge. 7/10 

Nunnington Hall, Nunnington, North Yorkshire

By National Trust standards, Nunnington Hall is a relatively modest country house and estate covering just eight acres. Still, the hall is a handsome and atmospheric stone building, mostly dating from the seventeenth century, surrounded by a series of luscious gardens adjacent to the river Rye in a picturesque corner of Yorkshire known as the Howardian Hills. Lacking outbuildings, the hall's National Trust reception desk, touting children's activity sheets for a hefty £2 apiece, tearoom and shop are all squeezed into the ground floor of the main house. In the large oak-panelled entrance hall, you are greeted by rows of stuffed stags’ heads, plus the morbid skins of several big cats, including a lion and cheetah, stretched out flat - trophies from hunting exhibitions by the last owner of Nunnington Hall - Colonel Fife.

Grounds of Greys Court, Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire

If you are approaching Greys Court from Henley, this little piece of olde England can be hard to find - the brown signposts with the National Trust symbol are few and far between. Even so, you may have to queue to get into the car park as Greys Court can get very busy on summer weekends and you should arrive before lunch if you want to be sure of a timed ticket to go inside the handsome red-brick sixteenth century manor house. But even if you miss out, the gardens and the views of the rolling Oxfordshire countryside should make the trip worthwhile. From the main lawn, there is a lovely bucolic view across to another fine old country house on the other side of the picturesque valley.

Buscot Park, Faringdon, Oxfordshire

A handsome Georgian stately home, reminiscent of a fine French chateau, in lavishly-landscaped gardens, Buscot Park is something of a treasure trove for art lovers. The substantial house is awash with both modern and historic paintings, including a Rembrandt portrait and Rossetti's striking Pandora, as well as sculptures. The extensive gardens are dotted with striking contemporary and classical water features, temples and statues. Through the gates in the walled garden, you can admire a beguiling series of man-made and highly-symmetrical waterwalls cascading down from a stone goddess framed by Greek-style pillars. The undulating grounds are partitioned by very high, red-brick walls, some broad lawns, a large lake and a series of long, narrow ponds. Nearly everywhere you turn, your eye is directed down carefully-crafted corridors, lined with trees, hedges and stone walls, towards features in the distance. Serving as the cafe and National Trust reception office, is the very large stable block, as big as a row of terrace houses, with its own clock tower, rising from the tall, tiled roof.

National Garden Scheme at Choumert Square, Peckham, south London

A mews hidden away in the back streets of Peckham, Choumert Square is two terraces of around twenty modest mid-Victorian workers cottages facing each other across a flagstone path. Period street lamps, colourful facades and some tiny, but luscious, front gardens add to the special ambiance of this unusual street. Surprisingly, there is even room for a handful of mature, gnarled trees. Once a year, as part of the National Gardens Scheme, the householders set up stalls selling tombola tickets, glasses of Pimms, lavish cakes, homemade lemonade, nick-nacks and other wares for charity. At the far end of the mews, a woodwind and brass band plays cheerful tunes in the tiny square where there is just enough room to sit down with a glass of wine or a cup of tea. On the day the square opens for the scheme, admission is £2.50 for adults and 50 pence for kids. 7/10

RHS Garden Wisley, Surrey

The spiritual home of posh English gardening, Wisley is an impressive showcase for the formidable skills and knowledge of the Royal Horticultural Society. In May, the green-fingered will hardly notice the fine imitation Tudor manor house that serves as a laboratory and the gateway to the 240 acre site. Instead, they will be transfixed by the extraordinary variety of plants and flowers that pack borders carefully-designed to provide a mesmerising mixture of colour, foliage and structure. Melded into the contours of the Surrey Hills, the gardens flow up banks, past ponds capped with water lilies and straddled by quaint bridges, around an undulating Alpine meadow, charming stone steps, rockeries and venerable old trees. To the south, Battleston Hill and Weather Hill, where the lauded rose gardens are now being redeveloped, both make for good vantage points for a sweeping view of the extraordinary array of landscaping and planting below. Urbanites in search of ideas should wander around the self-contained series of small gardens each designed around a theme, such as "rooms" or "pot plants".

Spectacular, high-tech glasshouse
Right now there is also a cheerful display of tiny themed gardens, just a few square feet, designed by local schools. One of them features characters from children's stories, such as Robin Hood and Peter Rabbit, while another is full of lavishly-painted pebbles. The fruit field and the arboretum in the south west corner are among the least colourful, but most peaceful, parts of Wisley. From here, you can follow the spiral path up to the top of the newly-planted fruit mount or head down the straight grassy path to the semi-circular lake in front of the spectacular, high-tech glasshouse. Inside are tropical, temperate and desert zones, each densely-packed with strange and eye catching plants. Steps, ramps and lifts enable you to get up amongst the treetops and survey everything from on-high. Entrance to Wisley costs £8.50 for adults, a fair price, but you will probably spend as much again in one of the several cafes and restaurants dotted around the site. And if you want a souvenir, there is also a pricey gift shop and plant centre. 8/10

Hughenden Manor, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

A red-brick, eighteenth-century manor house with fussy little Victorian parapets, Hughenden Manor isn't particularly striking or attractive. But it is the former country home of Benjamin Disraeli, billed as "Britain's most unlikely prime minister" and it pulls in the crowds. On a sunny spring Sunday, the National Trust sometimes issues timed entry tickets and you may have to wait two hours to get inside the house. In the meantime, you can wander around the orderly garden with its displays of white tulips standing to attention surrounded by forget-me-nots, play croquet on the immaculate lawn or go for a walk. A two-mile round trip takes you up to a high vantage point next to a stone monument to Disraeli, from where you can survey the suburbs of High Wycombe encroaching on to the farms and woodland around the manor. Alternatively you can wander down through the many trees, past the elegant Georgian vicarage, the early seventeenth century almshouses and the parish church to a leisurely river where cows laze on the banks. Or you can head for the restaurant in the original stable block, which has a cobbled courtyard that makes a fine sun trap.

Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, Dorset

Approached via a B road lined by more than 700 ancient beach trees, Kingston Lacy is an elegant mansion dating from the seventeenth century and boasting a spectacularly ostentatious and ornate interior. In the dozen or so rooms that have been restored by the National Trust to look as they would have in their Edwardian hey day, there is almost too much to take in. Built originally for the Bankes family after Corfe Castle was demolished by Cromwell's Roundheads, the house became a treasure trove for an avid collector of antiquities - William Bankes, who was banished to Italy in the mid nineteenth century after an alleged homosexual act. Particularly noteworthy is the extraordinary Spanish room with its lavish ceiling salvaged from a Venetian palace and its painted leather-clad walls, lined with an imposing series of portraits. In fact, Kingston Lacy is awash with paintings including works by the likes of Van Dyck, Titian and Brueghel, while just about every room is stuffed full of intricately-carved chests, panels and furniture, together with rare and eclectic ornaments, such as a statue of a boy doing a handstand and balancing a vase on the soles of his feet. In the large library, 31 rusty iron keys to the gates of Corfe Castle hang over the fireplace, reminding you that the Bankes didn't always have it so good.

Mottisfont Abbey and Gardens, near Romsey, Hampshire

Surrounded by a large estate incorporating a beautiful stretch of the Test river, Mottisfont is a medieval abbey converted first into a Tudor manor house and then into an eighteenth century mansion. With an elegant red-brick heart flanked by grey, sturdy stone wings studded with flint stones, the house lacks the harmonious appeal of many National Trust properties. Inside, a series of spacious rooms on the ground floor are open to the public. With the exception of the trompe I'oeil drawing room, much of the decor, with doors painted the same lurid colours as the walls, and fairly innocuous period furniture is somewhat crude and plain by National Trust standards. The collection of wishy-washy paintings from the early twentieth century also won't appeal to everyone. Only in the Red Room, where a corner of the old stone abbey is visible, and the atmospheric vaulted cellar, do you get a real sense of the site's long, rich history.

Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Sissinghurst, Kent

Planted around a clutch of charismatic and weather-beaten, red-brick buildings dating from the fifteenth century, the immaculate and imaginative garden at Sissinghurst Castle is in an exquisite setting. At the front entrance is the handsome, but shallow, main house and long library, divided by an archway leading into the front courtyard at the foot of the elegant tower. A wooden spiral staircase inside the tower takes you past a cluttered and homely library laid out as it was when writer Vita Sackville-West lived here and Virginia Woolf came to visit. You pass two much barer rooms before reaching the small roof terrace from where you can survey the neat patterns in the gardens below, the aging jumble of red brick buildings and the rolling farmyard beyond.