The Trentham Gardens and Trentham Estate
The Gardens are set within the much larger Trentham Estate consisting of parkland and mature woodland. Together these currently together cover some 300 acres (1.2 km²). The Gardens were designed as a serpentine park by Capability Brown from 1758 onwards, overlying an earlier formal design attributed to Charles Bridgeman. Trentham Gardens are now principally known for the surviving formal gardens laid out in the 1840s by Sir Charles Barry, which have recently been restored. In 2012 the Trentham Estate was selected as the site of a Royal Diamond Jubilee wood, and a new woodland of 200,000 native oak trees will be planted on the Estate.
Since 2000 Trentham Gardens has undergone a successful and major £120-million ($200m) redevelopment by St. Modwen Properties plc as a leisure destination. The current regeneration project at Trentham includes restoration of the Italian gardens and adjacent woodlands, the creation of a garden centre and crafts centre, and various leisure attractions. The overall aim is to avoid noisy theme park-like attractions, and instead to offer "authentic experiences" to older people and younger children.
As part of the regeneration a monkey forest, the first of its kind in England, has opened and has been successful. Visitors can roam through the monkey park where 140 Barbary Macaque monkeys wander free in the woodlands. There are no fences in place to stop the monkeys from interacting with the visitors, although it is against park rules to touch the animals and wardens are on standby to ensure the safety of the visitors.
In December 2008 a Giant Observation Wheel was opened on site for tourists to get an overhead view of the Gardens, the Estate, and out over the city. It later closed and was dismantled in 2009.
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“The devout have laid out gardens in the desert.”
—Robert Duncan (b. 1919)
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—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)