I remember going there as child with my brother and sister grew bananas and oranges, it was full of exotic plants, it was in the early 90s when things changed a certain type destroyed the park they smashed greenhouse destroyed the bowling greens with their cricket bats it was by the late 90s it became one of the worst parks in brum and still is.
Sometime in the early 1950`s my cousin and I had started collecting cacti plants. We heard about the glass houses being cleared in Ward End Park, and we both went there and were given each a large cacti plant.
Our collections grew to about 40 plants each. and when my cousin and I married -- not to each other -- around the same time in 1960, we both gave our collections to a younger cousin whose father had moved to a property near to Redditch, and had a large greenhouse.
The story ends with the cousin becoming the largest supplier of cacti and succulents to garden centres in the UK.