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Country parks and gardens

Warwickshire's green spaces range from the dramatic to the intimate - from ironstone hilltops with views across several counties to walled Victorian pleasure gardens tucked behind a market town high street. Whether you're after a full day out in open countryside, a riverside stroll with the children, or simply a quiet bench in an extraordinary garden, Warwickshire has a variety of beautiful green spaces to offer.

Country parks

You can spend an entire day in some of our country parks, and they are always worth a trip. Stand on the ironstone ridge at Burton Dassett Hills on a clear day and the world opens up in every direction - rolling uplands, big skies and views that stretch across several counties. In spring, Hartshill Hayes turns blue with one of the finest bluebell displays in the county, ancient woodland running the of hilltop above the Anker Valley. At Kingsbury Water Park, 15 lakes spread across former gravel workings that have become one of the most important wildlife sites in the Midlands - the kind of place where a quiet hour in a bird hide can yield something rewarding and sometimes unexpected. Pooley Country Park at Polesworth has a different quality entirely: canal-side walking, water meadows and an industrial past that surfaces unexpectedly in the landscape beneath your feet.

And then there are the greenways - four former railway lines converted into traffic-free corridors through open countryside. The Stratford Greenway, Kenilworth Greenway, Lias Line and Offchurch Greenway thread through farmland, alongside canals and near wildlife-rich cuttings, accessible on foot or by bike, and all of them free.

Town parks

The county's towns and market towns have their own exceptional green spaces. Jephson Gardens in Royal Leamington Spa is one of the finest Victorian parks in England, with formal flowerbeds, 140 species of trees and a beautiful riverside café pavilion. Victoria Park, also in Leamington, opened in 1899 and hosts the National Lawn Bowls Championships - its bespoke treehouse play area was the first of its kind in the UK. Abbey Fields in Kenilworth wraps around the ruins of a medieval Augustinian abbey with a lake, open water and direct access to the castle. In Warwick, Hill Close Gardens is a unique collection of 16 individual Victorian hedged pleasure plots, while the Mill Garden - pressed between the castle walls and the River Avon - is one of the most quietly remarkable private gardens in the county.

Stratford's Bancroft Gardens stretch along the Avon in front of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; Riversley Park in Nuneaton includes a free museum and beach-themed play area alongside Edwardian formal beds; and the Pageant Garden in Warwick - created from the proceeds of a 1906 historical pageant is one of those town centre secrets that most visitors walk straight past.

Gardens and rrounds of stately homes and castles

Warwickshire's great houses are as rewarding outside as they are within, and their gardens deserve a visit in their own right. At Charlecote Park, Capability Brown's parkland sweeps down to the River Avon, where Jacob sheep and fallow deer still roam as they have for centuries, and the formal parterre garden overlooks the river in one of the most satisfying estate landscapes in the county. Kenilworth Castle's Elizabethan Garden - painstakingly recreated by English Heritage from a detailed eyewitness account of 1575 - is divided into geometric knot gardens with a marble fountain, a timber aviary and painted obelisks, the whole scene overlooked by a terrace that has barely changed since Elizabeth I stood on it. At Baddesley Clinton, the fish pools, walled kitchen garden and lakeside walk through ancient oak and lime woodland are peaceful and beautiful, and the moat's reflections on a clear day are one of Warwickshire's most underrated pleasures. Packwood House is famous above all for its extraordinary yew garden - towering clipped forms that have been growing into their present shapes for over three hundred years. Compton Verney offers over 120 acres of Capability Brown parkland with lakeside walks, woodland and a bird hide. Coughton Court has walled gardens, a rose garden, bog garden and orchard alongside river walks. And at Upton House, steep terraces tumble down into an ice age valley, with herbaceous borders, a mirror pool and an orchard designed by one of the first professional female garden designers in England.

Read more about gardens in Warwickshire’s Stately Homes and Castles.

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