My Favourite Place: Royal Fort Gardens, Bristol

The Royal Fort Gardens is right in the middle of Bristol University.

I used to go all the time when I was a child, I loved it! The little pond froze in winter and we could daringly stand on it and the grassy banks were covered in crocuses and daffodils in spring. The fairy rings fascinated me!

It really is a fort, an English Civil War fortification on a vantage point outside Bristol used by Prince Rupert.

The garden is highly landscaped and, much later, I discovered it was the work of Humphry Repton in the 1800s and most of his trademark views are now blocked by buildings.

It’s a rich place in all sorts of different ways.

I would walk past the university library, which has a kind of 60s brutalist vibe to it and then past the new-and-old physics building. In the middle of the garden is a Georgian mansion; this used to be the music department, full of invisible people practising oboe or cello very beautifully.

The old part of the physics building is elegant

with huge, tall, slightly gothic windows. These are decorated with metal suns the size of dinner plates; sparrows used to nest behind them – I think they still do – and I used to count how many had bits of grass poking out!

There are some wonderful, mature trees.

Spreading cedars and some nice planes, but my favourite thing of all is the mulberry tree – it’s old and bent, but I would go along and eat the fruit when it was ripe, and marvel that such a thing could exist.

The garden isn’t manicured but it’s interesting.

It acts as a multifaceted breakout space for the local community and there’s always something new. There are now nice areas of wildflower planting and the mirrored maze is fun. I particularly like the collection of crataegus.

The Royal Fort Gardens, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TH.