Buying the Stanmer estate was one of the best bargains Brighton Council ever made – or so it seemed at the time.

The Earls of Chichester, who had owned Stanmer for three centuries, decided after the Second World War that they could no longer afford to run it.

So in 1947 they sold Stanmer for a rock bottom price of £224,000 to the council.

It included Stanmer House a handsome Palladian mansion, plus 5,000 acres of land and most of the villages of Stanmer and Falmer.

The council donated land for the start of Sussex University and leased the house to the embryo institution for 20 years from 1960. It also provided land for a college of education, later to become part of Brighton University.

But Stanmer proved to be an unlucky site rather like the West Pier with grand plans announced but little happening on the ground.

In 1980 Sussex University returned the house to Brighton Council saying it had no further use for it. The trouble was that no one else did either.

Everyone had assumed it would be a stately home open to the public rather like Preston Manor.

But it only had three state rooms, all on the ground floor, while there was nothing outstanding about the rooms upstairs.

The government grabbed a big chunk of the A27 to create the so called Falmer Diversion which split the village in two. It took even more land in the 1980s with the building of the Brighton bypass. Meanwhile the Great Storm of 1987 brought down hundreds more trees.

The two universities kept on expanding which was good for Brighton as a whole but not for Stanmer.

Millionaire Mike Holland bought the house and with the council managed to renovate the roof for £500,000, work that badly needed doing to prevent dilapidation.

The ground floor was turned into an upmarket restaurant and bar but never seemed to be a big success. Mr Holland made more money by rebuilding a wing behind the house which had been demolished during the war.

But a carpenter working on restoring the nearby stables fell through a gap and died. The millionaire and his foreman were charged with manslaughter and were each sentenced to nine months in prison. It was a tragedy for all three men and for Stanmer, a community where everyone is known to friends and neighbours.

Some good things also happened at Stanmer over the years. An hourly bus service was introduced on holidays to take people from the centre of Brighton into the park.

Open access was provided to green spaces and the little café in the village remained popular no matter what was happening to the restaurant in the house.

But this month has seen the opening of a new venture which is the best thing that has happened to Stanmer for years.

Called One Garden Brighton it is a joint venture between the city council and Plumpton Agricultural College.

It has been built on the site of the old nursery and cost the best part of £6 million to create.

Even the house has never had this sort of cash lavished on it and the result is plain to see. This handsome, well-ordered project is attractive both to visitors and students. People can buy plants and other horticultural items at a spacious shop. It boasts a restaurant and a snack bar. There are tributes to the Canadian troops stationed at Stanmer during the war.

Many years ago, Brighton had a great reputation for flowers. There were wonderful displays along the seafront and in the Valley Gardens.

At Preston Park, there were the celebrated Gardens of Greeting while Brighton also boasted the biggest municipal rock garden in the land and the national lilac collection.

It appointed parks directors like Ray Evison and Mike Griffin who were nationally known plantsmen. But cuts in parks were all too easy to make in the age of austerity and Brighton’s green lungs are not as lovely as they were.

Sussex is home to several of the country’s greatest gardens such as Wakehurst, Leonardslee, Borde Hill, Parham, Great Dixter, Nymans, High Beeches and Sheffield Park.

But none of them is on the Downs or the coastal plain and it is here that One Garden Brighton can come into its own. Its accessibility is a great factor in its favour and could bring thousands more visitors to the house and park. It could illustrate the perils and rewards of coastal cultivation. The centre could be marketed as the garden where the country meets the town and as a base for exploring the Downs, part of a national park.

And I am hoping the new green space, properly run and funded, can at last dispel the sad notion that Stanmer is unlucky.