Clumber Park

Clumber is a huge park of woods, heath and farmland, over 3,800 acres in all, but gardeners should head straight for the walled kitchen garden east of the cricket pitch. Its four acres are split by paths into vegetables, herbs, fruit, flowers and an ornate rose garden, and along one side runs a glasshouse 450 feet long, filled with pelargoniums, grapevines and a Butia palm. It was once heated by a coal-fired underfloor system, and the old pipes still sit beneath the decorative metal grates you walk over.

This garden also holds two important collections. One is a National Collection of apples from Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Yorkshire, with more than 100 varieties including 'Sisson's Worksop Newton'. The other is the National Collection of rhubarb, over 135 edible kinds, alongside local vegetables such as 'Clayworth Prize Pink' celery. Notice the iron gate at the bottom of the garden: it lets cold, damp air drain out to Cedar Avenue so a frost pocket does not form, a trick worth copying on any sloping plot.

Outside the walls, the Lime Tree Avenue of 1,296 common limes runs for two miles, the longest of its kind in Europe. The 87-acre serpentine lake stretches away from the site of the demolished house, crossed by an 18th-century bridge, and the Gothic Revival Chapel of St Mary the Virgin is close by. Paths and cycle tracks circle the lake, bikes can be hired, and the courtyard has a café, shop, bookshop, plant shop and the Discovery Centre, so it is easy to spend a whole day here.