Beauty that came from the bogs

Anna Pavord's Great Gardens: Beth Chatto Gardens, Esse

Last week, Essex Tourism launched its spring campaign to remind the rest of Britain that there really is more to this unfairly maligned county than Stansted airport and the kind of lifestyle that inspired Footballers' Wives. (The tourist board even drafted in Country File presenter and sweater-man extraordinaire John Craven to add substance to its rural credentials.) "Real Essex" offers a trail from the National Trust's Sutton House in east London via Hatfield Forest, Paycock's House and Flatford Mill, ending at Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site which is just across the Suffolk border.

Another reason to venture along the A12 is to explore the Beth Chatto Gardens, which feature many unusual plants, near historic Colchester. The gardens were begun in 1960, when Beth and her husband Andrew Chatto decided to transform an overgrown wasteland with poor gravel soil and boggy hollows into an informal garden in harmony with the surrounding countryside.

For visitors who like to create gardens as well as look at them, there is a large retail nursery selling a range of more than 2,000 plants suitable for growing in various conditions (damp, dry, sunny etc), the majority of which can be seen as you walk round the gardens.

"A series of drought-ridden summers persuaded Beth Chatto to convert her old nursery car park into a gravel garden, filled with plants that could thrive without any watering. It has been an outstanding success," says the gardening writer Anna Pavord. "But she understands the opposite condition too: her first plantings here in the 1960s were in areas of bog and marsh. She has a wonderful eye for telling combinations of plants – especially those with good foliage."

Where and when

Beth Chatto Gardens, Elmstead Market, Colchester, Essex (01206 822007; www.bethchatto.co.uk). Open 1 March until end Oct, Mon–Sat (9am to 5pm), Nov–end Feb, Mon–Fri (9am to 4pm). Closed Sundays. Admission £3.50, children free. Suitable for people in wheelchairs, except in very wet weather. The tearoom sells cakes, and the car park has benches for picnickers (no picnicking in the gardens). There is a lavatory for the disabled.