Winterbourne House & Garden

Winterbourne is a rare survivor: a high-status suburban villa garden from the early 1900s, built in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement and now the University of Birmingham's botanic garden. Its seven acres are Grade II listed. Margaret Nettlefold designed the garden under the influence of Gertrude Jekyll, and the planting still follows those ideas, with deep, colour-themed borders. Many original features survive: the raised terrace, broad curved stone steps down to the lawn, the walled garden with its wavy crinkle-crankle wall, the tunnel-shaped nut walk, a lean-to glasshouse and a pleached lime walk.

Later owners added more. In the 1930s came a pergola and a Japanese bridge and tea house, and restoration work on the bridge has now begun. The glasshouses hold orchids, alpines, carnivorous plants and cacti, and the lean-to currently shows chillies and other nightshades from around the world. Elsewhere you will find the sandstone rock garden, geographical beds, a woodland walk, the Stream Lawn and the National Collection of Anthemis, and visitors can also reach Edgbaston Pool, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. With an hour, stroll along the Pergola and down to the rock garden; with a day, add the house, lunch in the Terrace Tea Room and every corner from the Walled Garden to the Stream Lawn.

This is a very useful garden for anyone with a town plot, because it shows Arts and Crafts design at a domestic scale. Many paths are wheelchair friendly with step-free routes, wheelchairs and scooters can be borrowed, and there is a children's garden with a willow tunnel.