Tatton Park

Tatton Park packs a lot of different garden styles into one walk, which makes it a good day out for anyone looking for ideas. The gardens lie to the south of Tatton Hall, and range from tight formal terraces to looser, more natural planting, all within a 2,000-acre deer park.

The public entrance from the stable yard leads into the Walled Garden, restored in the 2000s and now growing fruit and vegetables that were grown at Tatton in Edwardian times, alongside glasshouses. Kitchen gardeners will find this part the most useful. To the east are the Conservatory, the Fernery and the Showhouse. Beyond lie the Pleasure Gardens, either side of the Broad Walk, which leads south to a copy of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. Along the way look for Charlotte's Garden, the Topiary, the Rose Garden, the Tower Garden, the Maze and the Leech Pool.

Near the south end of the Broad Walk is the Japanese Garden, made in the 1910s and restored in the early 2000s, with a Shinto shrine, a tea house, a bridge over the Golden Brook and a mound shaped like Mount Fuji. It shows how stone, water and planting can be balanced on a small scale. Next to the hall, the Italian Garden, designed by Joseph Paxton and laid out by Edward Milner in 1847, has two terraces and a statue of Neptune at its centre. Finish in the Arboretum, which has 880 plants of 281 species, or carry on into the parkland, where red and fallow deer roam.