When my children were toddlers, we would often totter down to Sydney Gardens in Bath, and stand on one of the bridges that span the Great Western Railway. If we got a friendly train driver, they would blast the horn as they raced beneath us, sending my two waving boys into rapturous squeals. This may not have been one of the park’s official diversions but the train drivers were, unwittingly, continuing a long tradition, since the park was originally designed as a pleasure garden.
Many gardens deserve that title – those of historian Sallust in ancient Rome, perhaps, the horticultural showstopper of Versailles, or the pleasure grounds and Arcadian landscapes ofemerged in the late 17th century in England, reached its peak in the Regency era and started petering out in the mid 1800s.
