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This exceptionally attractive botanic garden is essential visiting for any garden-lover who does not already know it. It has so many good and interesting features that you could spend all day here and not be bored. Cambridge's is also one of the most beautiful and best-maintained botanic gardens in the country. The limestone rock garden, newly interpreted, is one of its major attractions, where the plantings are arranged geographically. It overlooks the small lake whose surface is covered by water-lilies. Late spring is the time to see the nearby woodland garden. Here are fine tree specimens, including {Dipteronia sinensis}, {Tetracentron sinense} and the hardy paw-paw {Asimina triloba}, and a dawn redwood ({Metasequoia glyptostroboides}) grown from the original introduction of seed into the UK in 1948. Along the sides of the little stream which runs through the wood are candelabra primulas, astilbes, irises and a bed of the giant horse tail {Equisetum telmateia}. Late spring is also the time to see the horse-chestnuts in flower, the Persian lilacs and the National Collections of shrubby {Lonicera} and {Ribes}. The garden has a very good collection of peony species, which are in some places interplanted with its hardy geraniums: perhaps one reason why the garden is so attractive is that its National Collections are of supreme horticultural value. The garden also maintains two acres of (mainly herbaceous) systematic beds, a feature which was created by the first curator Andrew Murray in 1845. It contains some 1,600 species, belonging to 98 families and growing in 157 beds: it is both historically important and beautiful in its design. A more modern addition is the genetic garden, whose scientific purpose is to demonstrate the natural effects of genes on plant morphology. Everywhere, too, are wonderful trees: was there ever a tree more beautiful than the type specimen of {Quercus} 'Warburgii'? The winter garden, planted in 1978, is the best in England, and draws on stems, leaves, bark and flowers to create its unique beauty. The superb series of linked glasshouses, currently being restored and replanted, are a blessed sanctuary to horticulturally smart undergraduates during the cold months of an East Anglian winter, but every aspect of the garden's existence is educationally aware and it goes out of its way to attract and interest school-children too.
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