Last week in Sweden, I came across a new 'children’s garden', worthy of the name. ‘Maja’s garden’, at the fairy tale palace of Sofiero, overlooks the brooding silhouette of Hamlet’s castle across the sea in Denmark, and is only a couple of hours drive from Copenhagen airport.

Sofiero Palace, and the nearby working farm and garden of Fredriksdal, make an excellent year-round family break for those of us allergic to theme parks. And they are a lot more user friendly than many of their British equivalents. There are no stuffy notices about picnics, ball games or revelling. Visitors are encouraged to walk on the lawns. In fact they are encouraged to picnic and party there – or they can eat in Sofiero or Fredriksdal’s cafés.

Sofiero’s café and restaurant are inside the Palace whose pointed turrets and pretty interior give a taste of the fairy tale story behind its beautiful gardens. They were made by the Crown Princess of Sweden in the early twentieth century. Margareta, or Margaret Victoria Charlotte Augusta Norah Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Princess of Connaught and Strathearn, was the English granddaughter of Queen Victoria, adored by the Crown Prince, a devoted mother and highly popular with the people.

She died aged 38. By then Margareta had started one of the finest rhododendron collections in Europe and an ingenious tapestry of flower gardens set off by wide lawns, a royal football ground, a stream garden and managed woodland.

Pictures of Margareta often show her in Sofiero’s gardens surrounded by her five children, so it seems appropriate that a children’s garden has been added to her masterpiece. It’s the brainchild of Sofiero’s chief executive Cecilia Liljedahl.

‘I had the idea of creating a children’s garden and basing it around Maja who is a popular fictional character in Sweden,’ says Cecilia. ‘The illustrator and author Lena Anderson helped us to bring Maja to life here. Maja is 7 and she’s known as “the nature detective”. Her three books cover nature, growing vegetables and the alphabet. Her friends include Madame Leek, Mr Fennel, Mr Rabbit - which is why we’ve made life-sized puppets of them.’

Maja and her friends live in a small, airy house inside their quarter-acre garden which is separated from the surrounding gardens by a green picket fence decorated by red strawberry finials. Brightly coloured letters of the alphabet dangle from apple trees and various outsize vegetables, including a plastic pea pod, are scattered around the lawn.

The garden opened last year and it’s been such a success that the National Trust has visited with a view to doing something similar in the UK. Children visiting Maja’s garden can try on her clothes and try out a range of child-sized wheelbarrows, forks, spades, buckets and watering cans. Inside, there are tables piled with seeds, flowers, feathers and plenty more from the natural world that children are encouraged to categorise. Or they can just play.

The categorisation tables in Maja’s house are a way of helping children to understand what the Swedish botanist/economist Carl Linnaeus was doing when he categorised the natural world 300 years ago. Linnaeus was convinced that, if Sweden could learn to control the plant world, it could become self sufficient, thereby avoiding trade and all its attendant problems. A more in-depth exhibition of his work has been created in Sofiero’s conservatory overlooking the royal football ground. It’s stunning whatever your interest in Linneaus.

Helsingborg

Just down the road from Sofiero, in the port town of Helsingborg, the Swedish Botanist Linneaus also features, this time in a hands-on schoolroom exhibition within the park and working manor of Fredriksdal. Here, visitors can push their faces into a cardboard cut out of the great man.

Fredriksdal includes Lillaryd Farm, a Swedish farmhouse where the ‘family’ (museum guides) dress in eighteenth century clothes, churn milk, make hay and explain how servants, children and livestock would have worked and lived together (the goats used to live in a cupboard under one of the benches at night). The pigs are particularly alluring although I am told that the young boar is getting over ‘self esteem problems’. Only in Sweden.

Both Sofiero and Fredriksdal have year-round programmes aimed at the family from troll tours and Christmas markets to a Santa’s grotto and evenings when the gardens are lit by lanterns and candles. In summer Fredriksdal gardens overflow with roses, nature trails and a Linneaus garden, which includes a love and lust section (a subject dear to my heart at the moment - see related articles).

Both these places make a lovely family weekend, and a far richer experience then the curious cocktail of terror and boredom (queuing) offered by other theme parks. Maybe my family is just odd and therefore not cut out for theme parks.

Our one-and-only venture into them was a trip to the Tokyo’s Disney Resort. We fell at the first post - the Cinderella’s castle. My daughter and I were so spooked that we had to be let out of an emergency exit.

Fact box

Jane Owen flew with SAS. For general information about Sweden visit Skane's website or Visit Sweden. Click here for information about the best beaches and a good family restaurant.

Accommodation: Jane Owen recommends the Allt i Gläntan B&B between Helsingborg and Sofeiro, the Hotel Maria in Helsingborg, and Hotel Kullaberg on the beach, 25 minutes from Sofeiro.

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