A romantic landscape garden on a domestic scale, created in 1857 by the landscape artist John Berney Ladbrooke, at his home Ketts Castle Villa.
LOCATION, SETTING, LANDFORM, BOUNDARIES AND AREA The garden is sited on a steep escarpment with views over the city of Norwich, and is approximately 1,500 square metres (a third of an acre) in size. It is bounded to the north by a brick wall laid in Flemish bond. To the east, part of the boundary incorporates a blocked archway, and a grotesque carving of a face, possibly another fragment from the Chapel of St Michael. The remainder of that boundary is a low wall laid in Flemish bond, surmounted by a wooden fence. The south boundary is of Victorian brickwork, much overgrown with ivy. The northern part of the east boundary until the outbuilding, is modern fencing.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES There are three entrances to the garden. The first on St Leonard’s Road takes the form of a flint and brick crenellated gateway, surmounted by a stone shield, with a four-centred arch door (Grade II listed). This leads into a “green tunnel” of trees and mature shrubs before finally emerging onto the side of the front lawn to the south of the house.
The second entrance is a brick and stone arched gateway, with a wrought iron gate, which is reached by a public footpath from Gas Hill, to the lowest point of the garden. The entrance leads into a secluded woodland garden on the side of the hill and then along a serpentine path that climbs up the hillside.
The third entrance is sited between two outbuildings at the vehicular access lane to the north.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING Ketts Castle Villa (Grade II listed), built in an eclectic, and partly Tudor Revival style, in 1857, has a formal, symmetrical frontage, surmounted by a tower with commanding views down the hillside, and onto the garden below. There is a terrace in front of the house, and a flight of five stone steps down to the formal lawn, flanked by walls and piers in blue brick, with stone coping, and ball finials to the lower piers, also Grade II listed.
To the west of the house is an outbuilding dating from the mid-C20 but on the footprint of a glass house depicted on the original Ordnance Survey map of 1886. It has a patio area in front of it, sheltered by a high section of brick wall.
ORNAMENTAL GROUNDS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS The formal lawn in front of the house (to the south) has a retaining wall of stone rubble, approximately 3m high, surmounted by a decorative stone wall pierced with quatrefoils. From the house, only the decorative part can be seen. Much of the garden is set into the very steep hillside accessed via a meandering serpentine path. There are deciduous trees, particularly a large specimen beside the folly providing both seclusion and shade, and shade-loving plants, particularly ferns and ivy.
The paths, which are mostly stepped, are lined by low retaining walls of rubble with rough stone coping. There are various features along the paths, including a medieval revival gateway set in a high flint rubble wall; a small grotto built from flint rubble (which now houses a 1950s sculpture); and a summerhouse folly of flint rubble and red brick, incorporating a terracotta panel with a man’s face on it. The path in front of the summerhouse is inlaid with pebbles and bottle glass. Nearer to the top of the garden is the spout for a water feature (no longer in use), and some fragments of medieval masonry positioned to provide interest.
The “green tunnel” walkway from St Leonard’s Road is an integral part of the design, and leads to a series of architectural elements. Most are medieval revival, but there are some original medieval fragments incorporated, such as the seated creature carved in stone atop the pier near the garden end of the lane.  A medieval revival gateway with stone flat arch and shields above is flanked by inset plaques. The surrounding walls are built in flint in some areas, of blackened bricks in others (believed to be kiln linings from the nearby gasworks) and of brickwork in Flemish or English bond in others.  
At the end of the green tunnel nearest to the house is an open medieval-revival archway, in the style of a romantic ruin, incorporating a fragment of an original medieval rose window above it. To the left of this is a low niche with an original medieval stone arch above it. The original stone fragments are believed to have come from St Michael's Chapel (“Kett’s Castle”). 
The back garden to the north is lawned, with some young fruit trees. To the east of the house is an area of mature deciduous trees.
Sculptures dating from the 1950s-60s collected by Mr and Mrs Everitt (the owners from the mid to late C20) are interspersed throughout the garden. These include a terracotta face with a bowl on his head, displayed in the grotto; an abstract stone figure on a central plinth to the south of the lawn, facing the house; a human-sized iron sculpture of a stylised bird standing on one leg in the east of the garden; an abstract iron sculpture on the north lawn; and a dumpy angular abstract form, painted off-white, to the east of the house.