Isabella Plantation (and zombies)

Richmond Park, with its sweeping hills thick with trees, grasses and ferns, hardly needs a garden to make it special but it has one anyway. Isabella Plantation, a short walk from Ham Gate, collects trees, bushes and shrubs around some small natural streams that trickle down to a duck pond by the entrance.

Isabella Plantation largely gives the impression that it has been left to grown on its own, and I've never seen a gardener at work there, but the many paths and the few trimmed bushes show that somebody has been busy at sometime.

One of the newer features to creep almost unnoticed in to the garden is another pond with its attendant water-loving plants and wildlife.

And in the middle-ground, a shock of red to remind you of the clumps of Azaleas that congregate in this part of the garden.

The discrete paths follow the streams and cross them frequently giving the impression of an overly complicated board game that involves something like collecting flowers, rescuing princesses from goblins or, more likely, disemboweling zombies.

Whatever games of imagination you want to play, Isabella Plantation is a great place to play them with its mysteries, colours and spaces.