Forget strip-happy steelworkers and shiny cutlery. There's a new green face to Sheffield. Aileen Scoular visits three gardens at the very heart of the city.

Next time you find yourself hurtling past Sheffield, consider stopping off. Sheffield boasts around 90 open spaces, public parks and woods - making it one of Europe's greenest cities - plus several award-winning gardens. It even has its own Green Bond, a kind of ‘green bank' in which local people can invest their money for five years and help to safeguard the future of the city's green spaces and waterways. And Sheffield's green spaces are well worth the attention. In just one day you can enjoy three of the best urban gardens that the city has to offer.

Winter Garden

Start your day at the award-winning Winter Garden, which is just a couple of streets from the train station. Get there early - it's open from 8am - and you can grab breakfast and a shot of eco-friendly caffeine at Zooby's Fairtrade café. Then stand back, breathe in and gaze upwards at the sheath of glass above your head. More than 2,000 square metres of glass and 80 tonnes of steel have been employed to create one of the country's largest, and newest, temperate glasshouses. To give you an idea of its size, 5,000 domestic greenhouses would snuggle quite happily beneath its arched timber beams. It's environmentally friendly too: a sustainable softwood called larch has been used to build it, needing no preservatives or chemical coatings, and any plant pests will be controlled biologically.

So, what lives inside the Winter Garden? The answer is some 2,000 amazing plants from all four corners of the globe. Look out for gigantic palms from Central America and Madagascar, towering bamboos from China, giraffe-like eucalyptus trees from down under with camouflage bark and skinny trunks, and Norfolk Island pines (which grow to 45 metres high outdoors): we're talking layers of lush green leaves all year.

Take an MP3 tour or let your eyes do the walking, then meander your way to the Peace Gardens, which are just a few minutes away.

Peace Gardens

Today, Sheffield Peace Gardens is a funky-looking public square with a central fountain and seven separate water rills. In a previous life, though, this site was St Paul's churchyard. The church of St Paul's was consecrated in 1740 and demolished almost 200 years later, just before the Second World War. A temporary garden became, over time, the Peace Gardens of today, now a colourful wheel of seasonal beds and borders, beautifully planted with fashionable shrubs and trees. Spring highlights include ‘cloud-pruned' Austrian black pine, magnolia trees dripping in waxy pink blooms, and golden-flowered mahonia, all against a backdrop of stone, metal and water, key elements of Sheffield's industrial heritage.

Once you've wandered among the trees and dabbled your fingers in the fountain, head back to the Millennium Galleries for an early lunch. Then grab a bus from the Bus/Coach Interchange to Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which are one mile south-west of here.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens

Forget all the scientific stuff that you'd normally associate with a botanical garden and concentrate instead on what it looks like. This little gem has just had a makeover worth £6 million (£5 million of that from the National Lottery) and the gardens, in particular, have scrubbed up well.

The curvaceous Grade II-listed Glass Pavilions still play a starring role but now the planting elsewhere is also grabbing attention. Enjoy collections of plants from all over the world, including Mediterranean gravel plantings, shrubs from the Far East and American Prairie-style combinations. There's a restored rose garden for romantics and classic long herbaceous borders for art lovers - both at their best in the summer months - and, perfect at this time of year, a copse of ornamental birch trees underplanted with masses of spring bulbs.

Lose yourself in the beauty of a garden that has been planted with love, care and lots of expert know-how before heading back to the centre of the city for some window shopping and a well-deserved bite to eat.

You can get to Sheffield from Manchester and other destinations in the North.

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