Parks & Gardens
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A Gothic revival mansion with no monks, a folly built from Dover’s medieval town walls and an Edwardian garden next door by Thomas Mawson. Most of the house fell to dry rot; its billiards room now serves tea.
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A doctor who planted trees the way a painter uses a brush, a wartime glade nicknamed after Hitler and a Surrey valley that blazes every October. Here is the story of Winkworth Arboretum and how to visit.
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An American plant hunter bought a Cotswold farm on his mother’s behalf in 1907 and turned it into a garden of hedged outdoor rooms. Here is how Hidcote was made, and what a visit costs today.
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London’s great Dissenters’ burial ground holds Blake, Bunyan and Defoe among 123,000 burials, and it costs nothing to walk through. Here is who lies where, and what you can actually reach.
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Built on a drained, disease-ridden loch directly below Edinburgh Castle, these free gardens now hold a playground, a war-hero bear’s statue, and one of the city’s best free views — with one big seasonal catch to plan around.
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A knighted penguin, a decorated war-hero bear, and the world’s first captive-bred king penguin — Edinburgh Zoo’s history is stranger than most, and its winter Giant Lanterns trail is worth planning a trip around.
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A Victorian poem turned this loch into Scotland’s first tourist destination, and a Victorian engineering feat turned it into Glasgow’s water supply — both stories are still running, quite literally, at Trossachs Pier today.
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Two glacial lakes on the shoulder of Cadair Idris, quiet enough that you can drive right up to the water’s edge and still have the view mostly to yourself — though not, as it turns out, to swim in it.
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Built on the ruins of a burned-down Regency water park and centred on the world’s largest single-span glasshouse, this was the first new national botanic garden created anywhere in the UK in almost 200 years.
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The UK’s only Soil Association-certified organic lavender farm, 15 miles from central London, turning 20 in 2026 — here’s the story behind the fields and everything you need to actually plan a visit before the summer bloom.