Today, the gardens include huge tropical borders, intricate knot gardens, copious topiary, fantastical architecture, and theatrical water features.

This week, Carol visits the garden of Coton Manor, located in the peaceful Northamptonshire countryside. It was an inheritance that might have intimidated many.

Carol visits Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk, home of the Bloom dynasty of Norfolk horticulturists who introduced British gardeners to a wealth of plants and devised a revolutionary way to display them. Carol spends time with Adrian Bloom, whose ethos is to introduce the very best examples of plants that will grace even a tiny garden.

Carol visits the garden of a 16th-century manor house, Wollerton Old Hall in Shropshire, a beautiful and intricate four-acre oasis in the English garden tradition. With its traditional craftsmanship, sympathetic architecture, elegant topiary and hedges, and deep borders, it looks like it's been here for 100 years, but owners Lesley and John only bought the property in 1983, and since then have set about recapturing the spirit and quality of a bygone era.

Graham Gough and his wife Lucy started their nursery, Marchants Hardy Plants on the borders of the South Downs in 1998. Today their gardens have become a Mecca for people who love a new style of gardening.

Creator Beth Chatto, was a pioneer gardener and her 15 acre garden is the embodiment of "right plant, right place" and is situated in one of the driest spots in Britain.

The gardens, set at historic Llanover House, have been tended by seven generations of the same green-fingered family.