Gardens don’t get much prettier than these idyllic 17 acres overlooking Rutland Water. They boast secret nooks and crannies, a parterre providing year-round colour, and a walled kitchen garden that supplies the restaurant. Plus, there’s a pool tucked behind a wisteria-clad wall, a croquet lawn and a tennis court.

The landscaped grounds, covering 55 acres, that surround this Italianate mansion are thought to have inspired Lewis Carroll, and they certainly retain a magical ‘Alice in Wonderland’ quality. You can lose yourself among their secret woodland pathways, lakes with gliding swans, Victorian water cascade, sculptures, flowers and trees.

Designed by William Robinson – the Irish gardener who pioneered the ’cottage style’ – in 1885, these historic gardens continue to enchant visitors over a century later with their romantic, informal planting and glorious herbaceous borders. The 35 acres also feature a kitchen garden, orchards, meadows and croquet lawn.

The 26 ‘garden rooms’ at this romantic Cotswold country house hotel with Michelin-star restaurant follow the design of Septimus Warwick, an Arts and Crafts enthusiast. Head gardener David Pearce maintains the 12-acre garden according to that ethos. Managed ecologically, it features wild-flower meadows, along with water features and sculptures.

This luxury manor house with fine-dining restaurant is on the edge of the Chatsworth Estate. The emphasis in the garden these days is on soil health and a deep connection to the kitchen. There is an arboretum, a summerhouse, sculpture, colour, shape and texture – and it’s full of birds.

Alan Titchmarsh described the gardens here as an ‘Arcadian landscape’. That’s no overstatement. Designed by Humphry Repton in 1811, these Elysian 100-plus acres feature formal planting, woodlands, follies, grottos, streams and bridges, a dell with picnic spots and an arboretum.

The 17 acres here feature an ‘infinity lawn’ at the front of the house with views of the Aberdeenshire countryside and Grampian mountains, as well as a plethora of shrubs, flowers, walkways, topiary and summerhouses. There is also a small arboretum, rock-pool gardens, and walled kitchen garden.

Completely redesigned in 2014, the gardens have function as well as pleasure in mind – they supply the kitchen. Hidden arbours, pergolas, nooks and crannies, and quirky sculptures are all part of a lovingly tended, productive green space. Some bedrooms open out onto patios with garden views.

Famous in their own right, these gardens have been fashioned by generations of talented gardeners, including renowned designer Penelope Hobhouse. At the heart is the Parabola, a walled garden with an apple tree maze; beyond is ancient woodland, including oaks, 70-foot hornbeams, and a 300-year-old ‘Druid Tree’ yew.

At the heart of the flower-filled gardens with small woodland area on this Shropshire estate is the one-acre kitchen garden with herbal walkways. One of the largest in Britain, it supplies an abundance of fresh produce for the restaurant.

The 19th-century visionary gardener William Robinson developed his ideas on wild gardens at his Sussex home. Now eight full-time gardeners are kept busy maintaining Gravetye’s flower garden, meadows, orchards and kitchen garden.

Raymond Blanc’s Oxfordshire hotel is famed for its food, but also has sculpture- studded gardens, from a mushroom valley and wildflower meadow to a potager, pond and Japanese tea garden. There’s both a gardening school and a cookery school.

The Loire’s Château de Villandry was the inspiration behind Ballymaloe’s herb garden, with 70 plant varieties in its formal parterre. It’s one of a number of gardens here, including a Celtic Maze. Tours or gardening courses can be booked.

With parkland designed by Capability Brown, an Italian garden, orangery, arboretum and meerkats menagerie, Castle Ashby’s gardens are pretty impressive. Guests of the Falcon get free access and can swim in the lake in front of the castle.

The Gulf Stream warming this part of the Scottish coast means exotic plants flourish at Glenapp, with its Italian garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll, a walled garden with 150-foot glasshouse, and plenty of picturesque pathways in between.

The Michelin-starred cuisine tells you they’re serious about food in James and Kate Mackenzie’s pub. Now they have added a garden, with sculptures, hidden arbours, a kitchen garden and a herbarium, where every plant is edible, even the roses.

The formal gardens here are as aristocratic as the 17th-century house. Wander through the restored parterre and the walled and rose gardens, and admire the lily ponds and follies, before exploring the 200-acre estate.

A walk through this 18-acre estate, landscaped by a Victorian clergyman, offers the pleasures of a lake, kitchen garden and woods that are home to red squirrels and woodpeckers. Beyond, country lanes take you into idyllic Jersey scenery.

These historic gardens were designed by William Robinson, the Irish pioneer of the wild garden, in 1885. His spirit lives on in the romantic flower garden, pergola, kitchen garden, orchard and woodland garden.

Humphry Repton’s swan song (his last commission, in 1814), these gardens are as dreamily picturesque as Olga Polizzi’s hotel. Overlooking the Tamar are a formal garden, dell with bridges, arboretum, cottage orné and herbaceous border.

This restored Italianate garden, set into a hillside, is a delight throughout the year: in winter, admire the drifts of snowdrops in the woodland; in spring, displays of daffodils and bluebells. Art lovers will enjoy the sculpture trail.

These 800-acre gardens, comprising cultivated and landscaped areas, deer park, wild flower meadows and woodland, are no pleasing add-on to Hadspen House, but the star of the show. A dedicated museum tells the ‘Story of Gardening’.

‘In setting a garden, we are painting,’ wrote William Robinson, who owned this Elizabethan manor from 1884. Disdaining Victorian formality, Robinson favoured a natural style. Discover a wild garden, flower garden, orchard, lake and meadow in 1,000 wooded acres.

Five acres of gardens surround this Jacobean-style mansion, with clipped box and yews, cottage garden borders, an arboretum, a kitchen garden. Guests, free to wander, find hidden paths, a pond, a ‘secret’ bridge, specimen trees.

A kitchen garden lies at the heart of every Pig, and this Georgian manor with deer park has the largest, with smokehouse, glasshouse, wild-flower orchard, fruit cages and hives. Enjoy home-grown produce in the Conservatory, spa treatments in a ‘potting shed’.

Gardens laid out by unsung Edwardian genius Thomas Mawson surround this B&B overlooking Lake Windermere. Here are Mawson’s trademark terraces, lawns, dry-stone walls, glorious plantings, a private tarn in grounds that melt into the landscape.

Walking trails thread through 28-acre grounds at this 17th-century-cum- Victorian mansion. Explore four acres of kitchen and walled gardens, terraces, a pond, a stream, an apple orchard and fruit garden, beehives, ancient oaks, mighty beeches.

The owners of this former hunting lodge have created a glorious patchwork on 17 south-facing acres, with a parterre, ornamental ponds, mature trees, statues and topiary, bordering Rutland Water. Lovely in all seasons.

Guests can wander more than 200 acres of parkland, pleasure grounds and gardens at this Jacobean manor house. Garden tours take in a rare 17th-century box parterre. There are woodland walks, a lily pond, a cascade, specimen trees, a prolific walled kitchen garden.

From 1863, the Rev Christian (aka WB) Bateman landscaped the grounds around this ancient manor house, with lake, specimen trees, kitchen garden. They remain much as he designed them – though with the addition of a pool, jogging trails and spa.

Sir Charles Barry’s Italianate mansion overlooking the Thames stands amid pleasure grounds, with a yew maze, rose garden, a Japanese water garden, a parterre laid out by John Fleming, pioneer of ‘carpet bedding’ – and Britain’s most notorious swimming pool.

One of the UK’s largest hotel kitchen gardens, reclaimed from wilderness, supplies the kitchen with a wealth of produce at this Georgian manor house. There is a herb walkway, a walled garden with double-tiered herbaceous border, a riot of colour all summer long.

Olga Polizzi’s ducal fishing lodge stands in an 18th-century arcadia laid out by Humphry Repton, with the River Tamar running through. Discover streams, pools, cascades, ravines, a shell house and grotto, and one of England’s longest herbaceous borders.