In 2023 the park was placed on the UK government's "tentative list" of applications for UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

The Grand Entrance was designed by Lewis Hornblower and is at the northeast corner; it consists of three arches flanked by lodges and is in Ionic style.

The park has a modern visitor centre, café, children's play area, woodland walks and various sporting facilities and clubs.

c. xiii), allowed it to use public money to buy 226 acres (91 ha) of marshy grazing land on the western edge of Birkenhead.

[1][2] The park plan was designed by Joseph Paxton and the building was supervised by Edward Kemp because both had previously worked on redesigning the gardens at Chatsworth House.

Paxton planted trees and shrubs at various places so visitors would enjoy the surprise of unexpected views or hidden features as they wandered through the park.

The Grade II* listed Grand Entrance, which embodies many aspects of a Triumphal arch with Ionic features, was designed by Lewis Hornblower, with amendments by Paxton.

The family of a local trade unionist and "conchie", George Beardsworth, watched as he was repeatedly beaten and thrown over an obstacle course in the park.

A purpose-built visitors centre has been installed and work done to restore its original buildings and bridges as well as tidy up the lakes and parklands, and unblock the drainage system.

[12] All of the paths have been improved, trees and shrubs have been planted, the lakes have been emptied, cleaned and reshaped and most of the original features have been restored to their former Victorian glory.

He noted Birkenhead was "a model town" which was built "all in accordance with the advanced science, taste, and enterprising spirit that are supposed to distinguish the nineteenth century".

In his book Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, he wrote about its social value as an aesthetic form: five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People's Garden.

[16] Olmsted also commented on the "perfection" of the park's gardening: I cannot undertake to describe the effect of so much taste and skill as had evidently been employed; I will only tell you, that we passed by winding paths, over acres and acres, with a constant varying surface, where on all sides were growing every variety of shrubs and flowers, with more than natural grace, all set in borders of greenest, closest turf, and all kept with consummate neatness.

It is built in stone and consists of a square pavilion with a segmental arch to the boathouse, above which is an arcaded and pilastered storey and a pantile roof.