Sheffield Botanical Gardens designer Robert Marnock honoured with plaque

A blue plaque for Sheffield Botanical Gardens designer Robert Marnock has been put up at the entrance

A plaque has been unveiled to honour the designer of Sheffield's 19th Century Botanical Gardens.

The gardens, at Clarkehouse Road in the Porter Valley, opened in 1836 for the wellbeing of Sheffield's residents, the Botanical Gardens Trust said.

Scottish landscape designer Robert Marnock was employed to create and curate the gardens, the Trust said.

He was also head gardener at Bretton Hall in Wakefield, now the site of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens covers 19 acres and includes winding paths, woodlands and a prairie garden, as well as a fossilised tree stump and Victorian Bear Pit

Marnock went on to design the Royal Botanic Society of London's gardens in Regent's Park, and Weston Park in Sheffield.

The blue plaque, placed at the main entrance to the gardens, describes him as "an outstanding landscape gardener".

Sheffield's Grade II-listed Botanical Gardens and Pavilions fell into disrepair but were restored with Heritage Lottery Funding and reopened in 2007

Marnock became "one of the most productive and sought-after landscape gardeners of the 19th Century", the trust added.

The plaque, plus new signage and a family trail explaining the history of the glasshouse and gardens, was funded by a National Lottery Heritage grant alongside Sheffield City Council, the Trust and Friends groups.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens includes a fossilised tree stump and a Victorian Bear Pit which at one time housed bears and monkeys

The gardens and glass pavilions fell into disrepair in the 1980s until they were restored with lottery funding in 2007.

The gardens are now Grade II-listed as a site of special historic and architectural interest.

The Pavilions, also Grade II-listed, contain 18,000 hand-blown panes of glass. Damaged by a barrage balloon during World War Two, they now house exotic plants from around the world.