5/13/25, 10:55 AM The 25 Essential Gardens to See in Your Lifetime - The New York Times

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T 25

The 25 Gardens You Must See

By Alexa Brazilian, Miranda Cooper, Clare Coulson, Clare Foster, Johanna Silver and Kendra Wilson
Published May 6, 2025 Updated May 7, 2025

A garden is an ideal place to spend a sunny afternoon, but would you fly across the world for the pleasure of doing so? Which
gardens are worthy of such a journey? To answer that question — and define what makes a garden truly spectacular — we
assembled a panel of six horticultural experts for the latest installment of our T25 series. Louis Benech is one of France’s
best-known landscape designers, part of the team responsible for the much-praised 1990 overhaul of the Tuileries in Paris. In
2016, the Sussex, England-based garden designer Juliet Sargeant became the first Black woman to have a show garden at
the Chelsea Flower Show, where she won a Royal Horticultural Society gold medal. Tim Richardson, who lives in London,
writes about gardens for numerous publications and is the author of 22 books on the subject. Before founding Domino
magazine and serving as T’s editor in chief from 2012 to 2016, Deborah Needleman spent many years as a garden editor at
House & Garden. She also maintains an impressive plot at her home in upstate New York. The Japanese-born, New York-
based architect and plant lover Toshiko Mori is an architecture professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of
Design, where she focuses on sustainability. And Tom Delavan is T’s design director, as well as an interior decorator and
green thumb.

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Clockwise from top left: the T contributing editor and the conversation’s moderator, Alexa Brazilian, with the panelists Deborah Needleman, Tim
Richardson, Louis Benech, Juliet Sargeant, Tom Delavan and Toshiko Mori.

Each panelist was asked to nominate 10 must-see gardens and, on a video call in March, they spent almost four hours
winnowing down that long list to a definitive 25. Most, if not all of them, are open to the public, with some requiring
reservations or other advance planning. Only eight of the 51 finalists were suggested by more than one jurist, making for
some lively debate: All agreed, for example, that the Dubai Miracle Garden, a flower-encrusted theme park that includes,
among other spectacles, a nearly 60-foot-tall Mickey Mouse topiary, uses unconscionable amounts of water and includes no
native plants. But Sargeant, who suggested its inclusion, pointed out the project’s mass appeal. Though it was ultimately
crossed off, with one panelist deeming the place “deeply immoral” and another calling it “honestly disgusting,” all agreed
that it raised important issues, earning it a mention here.

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Gardens from 20 countries were nominated, with Italy and the United Kingdom coming out on top; each ended up with five
on the final list, followed by France with four. Unsurprisingly, the panel was particularly interested in the differences among
the styles favored by various cultures, from meticulously groomed Asian stroll gardens to more naturalistic English cottage
borders. The impact of colonialism on landscape design was also a topic of discussion, as was the focus on native plants in
several African, South American and Australian projects. A few gardens were disqualified for practical reasons: The owners
of one eccentric, privately owned sculpture garden in Britain, for example, asked to be left off the list for fear of
overcrowding. Others, like Claude Monet’s Giverny in France, were deemed too obvious or too packed with tourists to
wholeheartedly recommend. Ultimately, while the jurists have all traveled extensively, visiting gardens around the world,
none of them had seen, or even heard of, every nomination. In some instances, they had to defer to their fellow experts and
take a leap of faith — something that, as gardeners, they’re well accustomed to doing. A garden, said the British
horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), who designed one of the gardens in our top 25, “teaches entire trust.” — Alexa
Brazilian

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This conversation has been edited and condensed. Though numbered, the entries below aren’t ranked; the gardens appear
roughly in the order in which they were discussed.

1. Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Cranbrook, England

The famed White Garden at Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Cranbrook, Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst in 1955. Hulton
England, as seen from the castle’s tower. Annaick Guitteny © National Trust Archive/Getty Images
Images

In 1930, when the English writer Vita Sackville-West first came to Sissinghurst, a 16th-century Tudor manor set on 460 acres
in Kent, she “fell in love; love at first sight,” she later explained, likening the place to “Sleeping Beauty’s castle.” She’d been
searching for a property that would match the romance of her childhood home, Knole, just outside the nearby town of
Sevenoaks, which she was prohibited from inheriting as a woman (an injustice that inspired her lover, Virginia Woolf, to
write “Orlando” in 1928). Though Sissinghurst was overgrown, Sackville-West saw its potential and, with her husband, the
writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson, set about creating what is now arguably England’s premier garden of rooms. Nicolson
imposed a framework of crisp yew hedges that enclose each space and added an avenue of espaliered linden trees
underplanted with spring bulbs. His formality was the perfect counterpoint to his wife’s love of romantic blooms, old roses
and color-themed borders. Best of all, perhaps, is her White Garden, with rambling roses, spiky Miss Willmott’s ghost,
delphiniums and lupines, all of which burst into pale flower near the beginning of June. Nearby, there’s a picturesque fruit
orchard enclosed by a moat. Still, not all of the couple’s undertakings had fairy-tale endings. In the 1930s, after visiting the
Cycladic island of Delos, they attempted to plant a Greek-style garden but were eventually defeated by the combination of
English weather and poor drainage. In 2021, the British landscape architect Dan Pearson — in cooperation with the National

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Trust, which took over care of the property in 1967, five years after Sackville-West’s death — recreated the Delos garden,
where Mediterranean plants like cypress and fig trees now flourish among gravel paths, craggy boulders and reclaimed
stone columns. — Clare Coulson

Clockwise from top left: the Delos Garden, newly restored by designer Dan Pearson; Vita Sackville-West at work in her garden in 1958; sunrise over the
White Garden; the Rose Garden, as seen from Sissinghurst Castle’s tower. Clockwise from top left: Eva Nemeth © National Trust Images; John Hedgecoe/Popperfoto via
Getty Images; Andrew Butler © National Trust Images; Annaick Guitteny © National Trust Images

Louis Benech: I believe it was one of the first places where planting whole gardens in one color was done. Every time you go, there are little
changes, but the original plan is properly respected.

Deborah Needleman: It’s a remarkable series of different kinds of landscapes: a pond, a woodland, flower borders and a cottage garden. The
White Garden is iconic; I happened to be there the week that it was peaking, and it was the most sublime thing I ever saw. And it’s probably the
most famous English garden there is.

Tim Richardson: The white garden is the most copied garden anywhere — although it didn’t start as a white garden but as a green, silver and gray
garden. It’s designed to be seen at night because it’s next to the Priest House, where they would have dinner. Sissinghurst is really about this
couple and their life together, which was very unusual. Both of them had a queer sensibility, both of them had lots of other relationships, but their
own relationship was most important to them and the garden was sort of a third party in that.

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2. Great Dixter House & Gardens in Northiam, England

A view of Great Dixter House & Gardens in Northiam, England, August 2018. Sabine Bungert/Living Inside

The longtime family home of the garden writer and horticulturalist Christopher Lloyd, Great Dixter, in East Sussex, dates
back to the 15th century but was reconfigured in the early 20th century by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens at the behest of
Lloyd’s father, Nathaniel. The pair also worked together to create the estate’s six-acre garden, which has continued to evolve.
Today, the property includes wildflower meadows; a 150-foot border of intensely colorful flowering shrubs, perennials and
bulbs; a kitchen garden; the Sunk Garden (a flower-filled courtyard centered on an octagonal pond); the Old Rose Garden
(now filled with exotic plants); and the Peacock Garden, where eighteen huge yew topiary birds preside over colorful
thalictrums, asters, teasels and grasses. Under the leadership of head gardener Fergus Garrett, who arrived in 1993, Great
Dixter, which is now owned by a charitable trust, functions as a garden laboratory, where new ideas are tested, generations
of gardeners are trained and wide-ranging research is carried out. A major ecological survey over the past decade, for
example, recorded a combined 2,400 species of flora and fauna across the 72-acre estate. The ecologist and entomologist
Andy Phillips, who coordinated the project, described Dixter as one of the richest sites he’d ever encountered. — C.C.

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A smoke tree in full flower on the Great Dixter Topiary Lawn.

© Carol Casselden

Needleman: To me, it’s the quintessential cottage garden in that it’s meant to appear natural, but is anything but.

Richardson: It’s the most intense horticultural garden in the world, I would say. It’s like a monastery, with Fergus Garrett, who runs it, as a kind of
horticultural, radical abbot presiding over these novices who live there and meet him every morning at dawn to be assigned their chores. Every
year there are maybe 20 or 30 people from all over the world who do this and then they go out and become the greatest gardeners. It’s where the
most top-notch gardening is being taught and practiced.

Juliet Sargeant: For the home gardener, the wonderful thing about Great Dixter is that it encourages you to be bold and to try your own thing.

Needleman: I’d love to be able to visit Dixter in the spring when the fritillaria meadows are in bloom. That’s something I want to see at least once in
my life.

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3. Giardino di Ninfa in Cisterna di Latina, Italy

The lake at Giardino di Ninfa in Cisterna di Latina, Italy. Foto Umbi Meschini/Archivio Fondazione Roffredo Caetani

Built on the ruins of a medieval citadel laid out along the river that shares its name, Ninfa was abandoned by its owners, the
noble Caetani family, around the 14th century. The property, just south of Rome, was virtually a swampland when a
descendant, Prince Gelasio Caetani — a politician and horticultural enthusiast — inherited the place in 1921 and began
planting among the ruins. Caetani’s aristocratic English mother, Ada Bootle-Wilbraham, was a hands-on gardener who
installed the roses (tea-scented climbers and delicate noisettes) that now scramble over the crumbling walls, and successive
generations of the family have added exquisite flowering trees, including dogwood, magnolia (of which there are nineteen
varieties) and several wisterias in white, lilac and pink. Ninfa’s proximity to the water creates a lush microclimate (in
addition to the river, there’s a lake on-site), allowing the 20 acres to flourish even through searing Italian summers. In the
1980s, Ninfa became a trust and, until his recent retirement, it was overseen by the family’s former gardener Lauro
Marchetti, who preserved the integrity of the garden and its ancient beauty. — C.C.

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Flowering trees on the banks of the Ninfa River. Kari Heimonen/Archivio An 1878 illustration of Ninfa’s ruins. © Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images
Fondazione Roffredo Caetani

Needleman: You really get a sense of the layers of history. It’s the kind of site that the 18th- and 19th-century English landscape designers were
trying to create when they built faux ruins and follies and hermitages — but this is real.

Benech: It’s a complete atmosphere. When you see the wisteria growing through the stones, you’re scared in some way — it’s probably a good
thing to wear a hard hat! But there’s a mixture of abandoned nature and extremely well-kept aspects, too. It’s the kind of garden you would never
be able to copy —

Needleman: Unless you have your own ruined medieval village.

4. Jacques Wirtz in Schoten, Belgium

The cloudlike boxwood hedges at Jacques Wirtz’s garden in Schoten, Belgium.

Martin Wirtz

The Belgian landscape designer Jacques Wirtz was known for his carefully conceived, impeccably manicured gardens, like
the one at the fashion designer Valentino Garavini’s Château de Wideville, outside Paris, where precisely shaped, spiraling
mounds of yew dot the closely clipped lawn and low, sharp-edged hedges surround the geometric flower beds. His own
garden, however, evolved partially by accident. In the 1970s, he moved to a cottage outside his native Antwerp, intending to
use the walled, four-acre outdoor space as a nursery, with stock beds holding plants he’d eventually incorporate into others’

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projects. Once the specimens were in place, Wirtz — who’d been deeply inspired by Japanese topiary while working on the
Belgian pavilion at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka — began shaping them into cubes, domes, balls and lollipops. In the end, he
opted to leave his creations in place, where they remain today, lined up in their neat grids. Once part of a larger 18th-century
estate, the property had long paths edged in neglected boxwoods and Wirtz pruned those, too, transforming them into epic,
undulating hedges. The trees and shrubs — many of them evergreens — are the garden’s main event, and when flowers do
appear they’re also arranged in regimented blocks, like rows of vegetables. Although green is the predominant color here,
autumn brings fiery foliage on the apple, pear and plum trees. Left in their natural form, they also provide some softness to
balance Wirtz’s impeccably groomed interventions. — C.C.
Tom Delavan: When Wirtz first bought the property, it was a mess and the boxwoods were damaged in such a way that he had to trim them back.
That’s how he came up with these boxwood clouds, which I love.

Benech: It was a question of how to coiffer an old lady — and the result is fabulous.

5. Saihoji Kokedera Temple and Moss Garden in Kyoto, Japan

An expanse of moss at Saihoji Kokedera Temple and Moss Garden in Kyoto, Japan. Rob Tilley/Alamy

In 1339, Muso Kokushi, a Buddhist high priest and master gardener, created what’s believed to be the first-ever karesansui
(dry landscape), at the Saihoji Temple in southwestern Kyoto. The style, characterized by carefully placed rocks and swaths
of sand or gravel raked to invoke rippling water, is now considered the archetypal Japanese landscape, often referred to in
English as a Zen garden. In the nineteenth century, Saihoji was flooded repeatedly when a nearby river overflowed its banks.
The temple and its roughly eight-and-a-half-acre grounds were devastated, with soggy conditions allowing moss to take over.
Rather than fight nature, the monks embraced change, and today, Saihoji is best known for its incomparable collection of
fuzzy, rootless bryophytes, which grow with wild abandon over both the garden and the temple. With more than 120 varieties
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in total, specimens include Pyrrhobryum dozyanum, with elongated phyllids resembling weasels’ tails; fluffy, cushionlike
Leucobryum glaucum; and Sphagnum palustre, a pale, rosy-tinged bog moss. Saihoji looks quite different than it did in
Kokushi’s day, but, in the hands of the monks who continue to maintain it, its purpose of encouraging serenity and
contemplation hasn’t changed. To get into the right mind-set, visitors, permitted by reservation only, are invited to take part
in the Buddhist devotional practice of copying out sutras in the temple before exploring the plush, viridescent grounds. —
Johanna Silver

Colorful foliage at Saihoji Kokedera Temple and Moss Garden.

Frederic Soreau/Alamy

Toshiko Mori: This garden is very interesting in that it’s part of a spiritual practice: It’s used for meditation. Moss is very tiny, and being in the
garden, looking so closely to distinguish one type from another, requires a special kind of attention. It opens up a completely different kind of
universe.

Needleman: This is the garden I’d like to die in. It would be amazing to be on that moss.

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6. Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne in Cranbourne, Australia

The Red Sand Garden at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne in Cranbourne, Australia, with circles of saltbush and “Ephemeral Lake,” a 2004 ceramic
installation by the artists Edwina Kearney and Mark Stoner. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

Melbourne already had a long-established world-class botanical garden — the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (which dates
to the 1840s) when, in the mid-20th century, local groups concerned about the environmental effects of creeping
overdevelopment began laying the groundwork for this one, about 35 miles southeast of the city center. Completed in 2012,
it’s now the largest garden devoted to Australian plants in the world. An award-winning example of contemporary landscape
design, with a bold, graphic layout that incorporates large-scale contemporary art, Cranbourne is centered around the 60-
acre Australian Garden, a landscape of ponds and walkways on the site of a former sand quarry that’s divided into 22
separate zones. The largest, the Red Sand Garden, features circles of saltbush and is home to “Ephemeral Lake,” a 2004
ceramic installation by the artists Edwina Kearney and Mark Stoner. Nearby, the Peppermint Garden highlights aromatic
plants like pinnate goodenia, a perennial herb with pink and purple flowers, and Ziera adenophora, an endangered flowering
shrub. The Weird and Wonderful Garden, meanwhile, brings together specimens with strange foliage or unusual shapes,
including the Queensland bottle tree, with its pear-shaped trunk, and the leafless rock wattle, with its dense tangle of stems.
But as beautiful as these planted areas might be, what surrounds the garden is just as impressive — more than 800 acres of
preserved bushland with six miles of walking trails and protected habitats for more than 25 threatened plant species as well
as bandicoots, kangaroos and koalas. — Clare Foster

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The Stringybark Garden at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, which A mix of Kangaroo Paw plants. Lucy McNulty/GAP Photos
highlights plants adapted to regenerate after a fire. Royal Botanic Gardens
Victoria

Richardson: It’s more like visiting a zoological garden than a botanical garden because some of the plants are the size of large animals — they’re
massive!

Needleman: I don’t know anything about it, but I wrote in my notes, “It looks more like a zoo than a garden.”

Richardson: It’s a bit like the High Line [in New York City; see No. 8] in that you walk around this circle and there are different zones and areas you
pass through. It’s episodic.

7. Royal Botanic Garden Sydney in Sydney, Australia

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A jacaranda tree in flower at Royal Botanic Garden Sydney in Sydney, Australia. Theo Moye/Alamy
Located in the middle of Sydney, with spectacular views of the harbor and the opera house, this remains one of the city’s
best-loved community spaces. Established in 1816 by Lachlan Macquarie, then the governor of New South Wales, it’s home to
more than 5,000 species, including both colorful European-style flowers and wild-growing Australian plants like lilly pillies
(flowering evergreen shrubs), acacias (known there as wattles) and gum trees (a.k.a. eucalyptus.) The 74-acre property also
includes gardens dedicated to succulents, roses, herbs, palms and native Asian species. One particular highlight: the Cadi
Jam Ora (First Encounters) Garden, which uses both words and flora to tell the story of the Gadigal people, who were the
original custodians of this land. The native grass tree, which had huge cultural significance as a source of both tools and
shelter, is featured prominently in this section, while elsewhere one can see native plants like the tropical giant fern — with
fronds that can stretch up to 20 feet — and the Wollemi pine, one of the rarest and most ancient trees of the world, with fewer
than 100 adult specimens known to exist in the wild and a history dating back more than 90 million years. — C.F.

Visitors at Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, 1893. Courtesy of Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

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A Moreton Bay fig tree at Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. Natasha Tropical plants at Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. John W. Banagan/Getty Images
Maiolo/Getty Images

Mori: I wanted to have at least one garden that’s part of the life of a city and this one is right on the harbor, connecting the Opera House and the Art
Gallery of New South Wales, so you can just stroll through on your way to work. It’s also the oldest scientific institution in Australia, with an amazing
number of species. And 88 percent of what they have in Australia can’t be found in any other place on the planet! There are plants from the first
British fleet, which was the beginning of colonialism, as well as Aboriginal gardens, so you can distinguish between what came with colonial
influence and what was already there.

Benech: But there are plenty of botanical gardens that are part of a city; you could say the same thing about the Copenhagen Botanical Garden.
What I love here is that the Australian flora are so interesting — I imagine there are so many plants that haven’t even been identified.

Mori: I walked through this garden with [the American landscape architect] Kathryn Gustafson a number of times, and there were many species
that even she didn’t know. There’s constant discovery.

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8. The High Line in New York City

A view of the High Line garden in New York with “Blocks” (2016) by Rashid Johnson. Siegfried Layda/Getty Images

When the elevated public park opened in 2009, organizers predicted about 300,000 people would visit in the first year. In fact,
closer to 1.7 million passed through — and today the unticketed attraction draws roughly six million annually. Built into
defunct, elevated train tracks along Manhattan’s West Side (after a massive fund-raising effort spearheaded by the nonprofit
Friends of the High Line), the garden features native, drought-tolerant species. Its Dutch designer, Piet Oudolf, also took
inspiration from the wild-growing grasses, shrubs and small trees that arrived during the three decades, beginning in 1980,
that the railroad sat abandoned. Designed to be visually interesting throughout all four seasons, the gardens are elegantly
framed by narrow concrete planks that form walkways through the plantings, peeling up from the ground now and again to
form benches for resting and people-watching. A decade and a half after its establishment, the High Line still feels like a new
kind of garden, 30 feet above the streets of New York. Plus, as a model of urban ecology, it has been massively influential: In
New York City alone, nearby Little Island in Chelsea as well as parts of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway and the Green-
Wood Cemetery lawns all bear its rough-edged imprint. — Kendra Wilson

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A section of the elevated rail tracks on Manhattan’s West Side in 2012. A stretch of the High Line between 13th and 14th Streets in Manhattan,
© Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photo with woodland and grassland plants. © Carlos Sanfer

Delavan: Apart from the actual garden itself, which has become one of the most important tourist attractions in the city, it’s really changed that
whole section of New York.

Sargeant: I don’t know very much at all about it, but I have heard slightly political rumblings. Can anybody enlighten us on that?

Delavan: Some of the people who were living there were pushed out after the High Line made the neighborhood popular. Now it’s a very gentrified,
expensive place. The founders apologized and said, “We were trying to serve the community.” But in the end —

Needleman: They were too successful. I mean, that’s the story of Manhattan. It’s not unique to the High Line, but the High Line made it happen very
quickly.

Mori: The landscape is very sustainable though. It has a drainage system that captures rainwater and reuses it, so maintenance is quite minimal.
And there’s a symbiosis in the type of species that were planted together: They help each other survive.

Richardson: It blends the two most important movements in landscape architecture and design over the past 30 years or so: postindustrialism —
in this case, making a disused railway line into a park — and the naturalistic planting movement. For my money, this is the most influential piece of
landscape architecture that’s been created in the past 40 years.

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9. Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Newlands, Cape Town

Lion’s ear, sagebushes and golden daisies in bloom at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Newlands, Cape Town. Alice Notten/Kirstenbosch NBG

While native gardening has only recently become mainstream in the United States, the concept is nothing new in South
Africa. Case in point: this botanical garden in the Western Cape province, the first of its kind in the world dedicated entirely
to indigenous flora, which was established over a century ago in 1913. Located eight miles outside the city center and set
against the backdrop of Table Mountain’s eastern slope, the 1,305-acre public space showcases more than 7,000 species, with
high priority given to the singular fynbos biome, which is found almost exclusively in the country’s Western Cape region and
includes stiff, structured proteas, shaggy, flowering ericas and tufted, reedlike plants called restios. There’s also a robust
collection of spiky cycads, a type of seed plant some believe predates the dinosaurs, and visitors might also spot local fauna,
including brilliantly colored sunbirds — which resemble hummingbirds — owls and wildcats. The Tree Canopy Walkway, a
curved, steel-and-timber treetop bridge inspired by a snake’s skeleton, winds 65 feet above it all, offering mountain vistas
and sweeping forest views. — J.S.

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Some of the cycad collection at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical The eastern face of Table Mountain seen from Kirstenbosch National
Garden. Hoberman Collection/Universal Images/Getty Images Botanical Garden. Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images

Mori: They’ve been collecting indigenous plants that you can’t see anywhere else since the early 20th century, so it’s very significant. And the
setting right by Table Rock Mountain is quite beautiful.

Richardson: It’s maybe the most spectacular botanical garden in the world. It’s not really a botanical garden in a normal sense but more like a
mountainside. You can’t do it all in one day — you do bits and then come back another day and do other bits. It’s really quite wild.

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10. Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Ind.

A magnolia tree at the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Ind. Miller A stone walkway on the property, lined with tulips and animal sculptures.
House and Garden, Columbus, Ind. Photo: courtesy of Newfields Miller House and Garden, Columbus, Ind. Photo: courtesy of Newfields

The Miller House, situated in the small city of Columbus, about 50 miles from Indianapolis, is the product of two
cosmopolitan Midwesterners: the architect Eero Saarinen and the industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who, with his wife, Xenia,
commissioned the approximately 7,000-square-foot, flat-roof glass-and-stone structure as a family home in 1953. It was
Saarinen who hired Dan Kiley, a regular collaborator of his, to design the 13.5-acre grounds, which back up to the Flat Rock
River. Kiley’s signature was pairing Modernist architecture with the formality of 17th-century French gardens, as
exemplified by the South Garden at the Art Institute of Chicago, on which he also worked with Saarinen. At Miller House, he
lined the entrance drive with a double row of horse chestnut trees (since replaced by yellow buckeyes) and added another
allée, of honey locusts, along the west side of the house to frame the river view. Magnolia trees by the entrance add curves to
the symmetry, while large, free-flowing weeping beech trees shield the house from wind and sun. The sense of control is
mixed with exuberance: By the terrace, the emerald green lawn meets platforms of liriope and a checkerboard with pink and
red impatiens under a canopy of crab apple trees, all of which evokes the decorator Alexander Girard’s vibrantly patterned
interiors. While the legacy of this kind of water-intensive, high-maintenance landscape is ecologically fraught, the garden
stands as a remarkable icon of its time. Today, fittingly, it’s owned and operated by the Indianapolis Museum of Art at
Newfields. — K.W.

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The grounds of the Miller House in the mid-1950s. Balthazar Korab, Library of Congress
Needleman: This is Dan Kiley’s masterpiece — the perfect marriage of classical gardening with Modernism. The house, while it’s this glass
structure, recalls a Palladian villa and the garden does a similar thing: It incorporates classical elements — hedging, allées, groves — but none of
them are as you would expect. I think it’s the most important American Modernist garden.

Mori: It has this incredible sense of calm and very generous proportions. I think that’s something about Kiley’s work that’s difficult to perceive in a
photograph — the slower pace at which you move through it makes you feel like you’re in a different world.

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11. Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, England

The garden at Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, England. John Glover/GAP Photos

Neither fences nor hedges mark the borders of the filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman’s former home in Dungeness.
Instead, the small wooden fisherman’s cottage and its garden — which he bought in 1986 and lived in until his death in 1994
— sit directly on the rocky beach of this desolate English headland, which is dominated by views of a nuclear power plant. In
front of the house, which is painted pitch-black with acid yellow trim, plants are arranged into flower beds, a riff on suburban
landscaping that feels surreal in this hardscrabble setting. Jarman first attempted to use traditional blooms like roses, but
quickly realized that only the toughest annuals and perennials would survive such unbuffered exposure to salt, wind and
sun. Ultimately, he planted a trippy rainbow of valerian, viper’s bugloss, foxglove, sea campion, wild peas, teasels, sea kale
and sea holly, along with the gorse that flourishes along the English coastline. When in full flower, swaths of red and yellow
poppies add to the Technicolor palette. Scattered with found objects, the garden doubles as an art installation: There are
pieces of stone and flint arranged in circles, rusted metal fragments standing in for statuary and huge chains displayed like
artifacts. Jarman gathered all of them himself, mining the detritus of the semi-industrial landscape. He left the cottage to his
longtime companion, Keith Collins, and after Collins’s death in 2018, the British charity Art Fund, along with Jarman’s
friends, raised funds to preserve it. Today it’s maintained by the local nonprofit Creative Folkestone. — C.C.

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Jarman at work in his garden circa 1992.

Geraint Lewis/ArenaPal

Needleman: Jarman knew he was dying when he was making this garden, and that feels poetic to me. Often gardens are enclosed and we’re trying
to create a fantasy and an idealized place, but this opens onto the power plant. To me, it just looks very beautiful.

Sargeant: I was there last weekend, actually, and it’s amazing. That whole area is a nature preserve and the sea is just a few hundred meters away.
A good thing to do is visit Great Dixter, Sissinghurst and this one at the same time because the three together make a wonderfully contrasting tour
of gardens in the same area.

Richardson: I didn’t want to go after Jarman died, partly because I don’t think Collins, who was still living there, liked visitors coming and he didn’t
really maintain it in the same way. Now the garden is very strongly protected and has its own head gardener, [Jonny Bruce], who’s really good.

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12. Sítio Roberto Burle Marx in Rio de Janeiro

Various spiky plants surrounding the Studio, a live-work space constructed using the facade of a neo-Classical townhouse, at Sítio Roberto Burle Marx
in Rio de Janeiro. © Iphan/SRBM/Oscar Liberal

Considered the father of modern tropical garden design, Roberto Burle Marx completed more than 2,000 landscapes
between the 1930s and the ’90s in his native Brazil and beyond. But his former home, on the outskirts of Rio, is the place to
experience the full force of his vision. On the grounds of a 100-acre hillside, Burle Marx — an early proponent of designing
with native plants — nurtured and studied more than 3,500 specimens from Central and South America, some of which he’d
discovered on expeditions into the jungle. “Burle Marx considered the property a ‘landscape laboratory,’ often relating it to
an alchemist’s crucible,” says Claudia Storino, director of what’s today a house-and-garden museum. To better understand
the tropical and subtropical plants’ growth habits and design potential, the landscape architect assembled them in various
ways throughout the property. Pieces of reclaimed granite form ancient-looking backdrops for bromeliads, giant agave
emerge from a sea of snake plants and masses of pygmy screw pine fringe the banks of a pond. As Burle Marx once said:
“The plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant … but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.” —
Miranda Cooper

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A lake at Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, with a sculptural retaining wall. © Tropical foliage at Sítio Roberto Burle Marx. Michael Runkel/Robert
Iphan/SRBM/Oscar Liberal Harding/Alamy

Mori: Marx’s gardens aren’t like European gardens: The shapes here are organic, and he incorporates the idea of rainforest conservation.

Benech: I love the color palette of the pergola of the small house in which he lived: white and pale green that mirrors the climbing jade vines
exactly, like a painting. It’s an example of how keen he was with color. I think he’s the most important designer of the 20th century.

13. Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan

A view of the pond at Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan. Leopold von Ungern/Alamy

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Built by members of the imperial family in the 17th century, this one seduces visitors not with a single sweeping vista, but,
rather, with a series of impeccably crafted scenes. The 17-acre landscape features a large, irregularly shaped pond, with hills
and valleys built along a pathway to obscure and reveal various views — a signature of so-called Japanese stroll gardens,
which proliferated during the Edo period. At one point, a peninsula of flat rocks jutting into the pond appears, complete with
a stone lantern standing in for a lighthouse — a recreation of a famous viewpoint over Japan’s Amanohashidate sandbar.
Elsewhere, visitors encounter evergreen trees and shrubs planted alone or in small, intentional vignettes. Integrated
seamlessly into the landscape are rustic teahouses with viewing platforms, the most beloved of which is a wooden structure
positioned to admire the harvest moon and its reflection in the pond. Even the ground itself is carefully calibrated to control
the way the garden is experienced: Small stones form tight jigsaw patterns along some pathways for a smooth journey; in
other areas, steps are spaced farther apart, encouraging visitors to slow down and appreciate a mossy bridge, say, or the
silhouette of a lone pine tree. — M.C.

One of several teahouses at Katsura Imperial Villa. Jérôme Galland A peninsula built from rocks recreates a famous viewpoint over Japan’s
Amanohashidate sandbar. Jérôme Galland

Mori: It’s different from most Japanese gardens in that it’s completely scripted. You walk from one place to another and take in very specific
viewpoints. It’s a stroll garden (or kaiyu-shiki) and also a hide-and-seek garden (miegakure), where you see various elements appearing and
disappearing. It’s maintained by the imperial household and it’s difficult to visit: My advice is to make an appointment online as early as possible.

Sargeant: When you visit, how can you get insight into those things? The hide-and-seek, the reading of the garden … is that explained in some
way?

Benech: I think you’re required to have a guided tour.

Richardson: But isn’t the most famous Japanese garden neither this one nor the moss garden [see No. 5] but Ryoanji [the Kyoto rock garden and
Zen temple, built in the 15th century]?

Mori: Ryoanji is famous, but it doesn’t have the complexity of the Imperial Palace or the spiritual quality of the moss garden.

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14. Classical Gardens of Suzhou, Suzhou, China

The Humble Administrator’s Garden, one of the Classical Gardens of Suzhou in Suzhou, China. Jochen Schlenker/Robert Harding/Alamy

The city of Suzhou, some 70 miles west of Shanghai, is often billed as the Venice of the East for its network of picturesque
canals. Even better, however, are its historic gardens, which span over a thousand years of history and number more than
50, nine of which, dating from the 11th to the 19th centuries, are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Each is considered a
masterpiece of classical Chinese garden design, with the aim of evoking vast natural landscapes on a small scale through the
use of water, architecture, rocks and plants. The largest, and perhaps the best known, is the 13-acre Humble Administrator’s
Garden, created in the 16th century by the government official Wang Xianchen. One of the most ornate in the city, it contains
numerous pavilions, pools and interconnecting islands. The Master of the Nets Garden — originally laid out in the 12th
century by Shi Zhengzhi, a retired bureaucrat who was inspired by the solitary life of a Chinese fisherman — is much
smaller, only about one and a half acres, and is centered on a large reflecting pond, known as the Rosy Cloud Pool. There,
pavilions are built on rocks or piers right over the water’s edge, with larger buildings set farther back and partially obscured
by trees, making the boundaries of the garden unclear. This clever use of proportion, scale and framing make the garden a
quintessential example of the classical Chinese style, as do its magnolias, peonies and lacebark pines, each of which holds
cultural and seasonal significance. — C.F.

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Suzhou’s Humble Administrator’s Garden. Jérôme Galland The Lingering Garden, also in Suzhou. Jérôme Galland

Sargeant: Here in the West, we’re taught that Japanese gardens evolved from the Chinese style, but I’ve learned that it was actually much more of
a back-and-forth between the two styles.

Mori: These gardens were built over nearly a thousand years, so they have many different representations of Chinese garden design motifs:
pagodas, buildings, landscape elements. Each of the gardens is a place of philosophy and thinking.

Sargeant: In the English style, we connect with the landscape by borrowing the view, building a garden to highlight it. Here, they’re telling the story
of a landscape by recreating it within the gardens themselves, in miniaturized form.

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15. Rousham House & Gardens in Rousham, England

Rousham House in Rousham, England. Carole Drake/GAP Photos

In the 18th century, country estates all over England were being torn up as the formal French style that had long dominated
garden design gave way to a fashion for more natural-looking, so-called Arcadian landscapes. The architect and designer
William Kent was the trend’s leading proponent, and also the person that Sir James Dormer, a British Army officer, had hired
to rethink the gardens at his family’s 25-acre Oxfordshire estate, Rousham. Today, Dormer’s descendants remain in
residence there and Kent’s garden has, remarkably, lasted in its entirety, one of the era’s few survivors. Visitors can follow
the meandering, 300-year-old paths that he laid out through shady vales and over sloping lawns and take in views of the
River Cherwell from his seven-arched stone loggia, modeled after the forecourt of the temple of Fortuna Primigenia at
Palestrina, near Rome. To accentuate Rousham’s classical mood, Kent installed a faux ruin, nicknamed “The Eyecatcher,” on
a distant hill, as well as statuary of mythical figures throughout: Venus overlooks a lake while Antinous, a young lover of the
Emperor Hadrian, guards the woodland. On the northeast side of the circa 1635 house, the walled garden is even older,
predating Kent’s design. There, deep borders are filled with colorful blooms; peach, apricot, pear and plum trees are trained
against 17th-century brick garden walls and a boxwood parterre is filled with picture-perfect English roses. — C.C.

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A parterre garden with boxwood-edged beds sits in front of Rousham’s pigeon house.

Marcus Harpur/GAP Photos

Richardson: Rousham is still in the hands of the family that commissioned it back in the early 18th century and it’s a great favorite of landscape
architects and garden designers. It’s Kent’s masterpiece, which he did after designing other places like Chiswick House and Stowe, where he was
learning his trade. Here, he’s unleashed.

Needleman: It’s completely man-made but it taps into our idea of a perfect countryside — a garden leaping the fence. It’s a beautiful, sensual kind
of landscape.

Sargeant: And it’s got a wonderful ha-ha.

Delavan: What’s a ha-ha?

Needleman: It’s a kind of running ditch so you can have the cattle and sheep grazing, and they look like they’re on your lawn but they actually can’t
get to the house. It’s this idea of bringing the landscape, unimpeded by a fence, straight up to the door.

Sargeant: It’s called that because it takes you by surprise. You’re strolling in the garden and you come across it and you say, “Aha!”

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16. Little Sparta in Dunsyre, Scotland

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s 1983 work “The Present Order Is the Disorder of the Future — Saint Just” at Little Sparta in Dunsyre, Scotland. Charles Hawes/GAP
Photos

In 1966, the Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay moved with his wife, Sue, to an isolated farmstead called Stonypath,
an hour outside Edinburgh, in the Pentland Hills. With little money or knowledge of garden design, they set about making
what would become Finlay’s most enduring creative work. The seven-acre garden was originally intended as a place to
display Finlay’s art: poetry, aphorisms, puns and metaphors carved into stone and wood. His plaques, headstones,
sculptures and obelisks — created with a team of craftspeople — explore themes including classical mythology, French
revolutionary philosophy, pastoral romanticism and modern warfare. Installed around the garden (in the clearing of a glade,
on a bridge over a stream, as plinths in a pond), they’re laced with wit and unpredictability: A visitor might be lulled by the
peaceful setting, its wide views over wildflower-strewn moorland, only to be jolted by the pair of giant stone hand grenades
with metal pins perching on the formal gateposts. Finlay named the garden Little Sparta in the late 1970s, partly as a nod to
Edinburgh’s reputation as “the Athens of the North” (a reference to its many neoclassical buildings and academic leanings)
but also in homage to the militaristic, ancient city-state; he had his own fierce battles with the local council. Almost two
decades after his death, the wholly unique landscape continues to resonate in the manner detailed in “Unconnected
Sentences on Gardening,” his 1980 poem. “Certain gardens are described as retreats,” he wrote, “when they are really
attacks.” — K.W.
Richardson: People think of it as an agglomeration of about 150 individual pieces but it was never conceived in that way. It’s a total entity. He was
mixing the idealism of humankind with its malevolence and violence, so you have things like classical pillars topped with hand grenades and a
tortoise sculpture with “panzer leader” [“panzer” is German for “tank”] written on its side. There are a lot of references to the French Revolution
because he was obsessed with its mix of idealism and horrifying cruelty, the contradiction in human life. Some say it’s the most important work of
art made in Scotland in the second half of the 20th century.

Sargeant: I’ll second that. And you can still visit it, Tim?

Richardson: It’s open and in good shape.

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17. Le Bois des Moutiers in Varengeville-sur-Mer, France

The White Garden at Le Bois des Moutiers in Varengeville-sur-Mer, France. Nicolas Mathéus

Between 1889 and 1932, the architect Edwin Lutyens and the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll collaborated on about 100
projects, most of them in their native England. Le Bois des Moutiers, perched on cliffs overlooking the English Channel, is
the only one in France, commissioned by the banking heir Guillaume Mallet at the end of the 19th century. The five-acre
garden features landscaped parkland as well as a series of discrete spaces nearer the house that correspond to different
rooms in the property’s Arts & Crafts-style manor house and mirror its features. In the White Garden, for instance, stone
benches are set into a hedge to reflect the layout of two closets flanking a large window in the music room. Le Bois des
Moutiers also claims the distinction of being the first garden in France to adopt mixed borders, the wide, cottage-style flower
beds planted with colorful blooms like roses, lavender and delphiniums that were a signature of Jekyll’s style. The estate was
acquired in 2020 by the French film producer Jérôme Seydoux and his wife Sophie, who commissioned the American garden
designer Madison Cox to oversee a much-needed restoration. In addition to revitalizing and replanting the original garden
rooms, Cox is removing overgrown vegetation to improve the water views and adding contemporary elements including a
large, reflecting water feature and a labyrinth of espaliered fruit trees and yews. — C.F.

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The central corridor of the labyrinth at Le Bois des Moutiers. Nicolas Quince, raspberries, gooseberries and currants grow in one area of the
Mathéus labyrinth. Nicolas Mathéus

Delavan: What I love about this one is that the interior and garden design are interwoven. That’s a sophisticated concept, and it was conceived in
the 19th century.

Benech: And it’s aging well! I’ve known this place for the past 50 years. It’s special to still find trees there, like the rhododendrons and yews, that
were there initially, because it’s been redone and redone and redone over the past hundred years.

Needleman: It’s a Gertrude Jekyll-Edwin Lutyens mega collaboration — the first English-style flower garden in France. And Madison Cox is
sensitive and original when dealing with historic gardens and bringing them into the present moment, as he did at the Villa Oasis/Majorelle Gardens
for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. He’s the perfect choice to update it.

18. Les Jardins de Kerdalo in Trédarzec, France

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Wisteria growing on a pavilion at Les Jardins de Kerdalo in Trédarzec, France. Guillaume Fandel

The Russian Prince Peter Wolkonsky fell in love with plants as a child, sneaking into the kitchen plot of his next door
neighbor, Czar Nicholas II. In 1965, after traveling the world painting landscapes and botanicals, he purchased a former
orchard set on hills overlooking the Jaudy River in Brittany and started planting a garden. The 42 acres are now divided into
seven distinct designs that range in style from a wild moor covered in golden grasses to a manicured expanse of geometric
hedges. Harnessing the many streams running through the property, he built reflecting pools, ponds, waterfalls and an
Italianate grotto decorated with shells. Over the next three decades, Wolkonsky amassed a vast collection of rhododendrons,
azaleas, camellias and dogwoods; upon his death in 1997, he left the land to his daughter, the horticulturist Isabelle Vaughan.
In 2021, she sold Kerdalo to its current steward: the accessories designer Christian Louboutin. Early in his career, feeling
burned out on fashion, he’d dabbled in landscape design, “but working with nature required too much time and patience for
the young, impatient man I was at that age,” Louboutin says. “So I went back to shoe design.” An admirer of Kerdalo since
first catching a glimpse of it more than 30 years ago, he’s been updating leaky water systems and ripping out diseased
boxwoods, which will be replaced next year with an installation by the Italian artist Giuseppe Ducrot, inspired by
Wolkonsky’s hedges. “The garden doesn’t belong to me,” says Louboutin, whose goal is to preserve as much of the prince’s
original design as possible while also protecting Kerdalo from the effects of climate change. “I belong to the garden.” — J.S.

A view of Kerdalo’s geometric hedges. Guillaume Fandel Peter Wolkonsky working in his garden circa 1990. Georges Lévêque

Benech: I hadn’t been there for more than 30 years, but I took Christian Louboutin to help connect him with Isabelle when she was selling the
place. I was amazed by how big Peter’s newer plantings were — they had been my height [about six feet] when I was last there. And it’s extremely
well planted with both ordinary and extremely rare things, so visitors can enjoy it whether they know about plants or not. There are some very
special magnolias there.

Alexa Brazilian: Can we visit or do you have to make friends with the owner?

Benech: It’s totally open to visitors, which was part of the deal when Christian bought it.

19. Villa Gamberaia in Settignano, Italy

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A view of the gardens at Villa Gamberaia in Settignano, Italy, as seen in a photograph taken between 1910 and 1920. Touring Club Italiano/Marka/Universal
Images Group via Getty Images

Located in a hillside village about a 15-minute drive northeast from Florence, the gardens of Villa Gamberaia, with not quite
four acres under cultivation, are “probably the most perfect example of the art of producing a great effect on a small scale,”
wrote Edith Wharton in her 1904 book, “Italian Villas and Their Gardens.” Composed mostly of cypress, boxwood, yew, oak,
lemon and olive trees — with a few mixed borders of lavender, irises and roses — the space is arranged as a long, grassy
bowling green opening onto a series of small garden rooms. The layout has remained largely the same since the early 17th
century, when it was planned by Zanobi Lapi, a Florentine merchant, along with his two nephews. Gamberaia’s style is hard
to define — “No matter how carefully one measures the spaces, analyzes the plan or seeks to interpret it in terms of
Renaissance, Mannerist, or Baroque … there is always something elusive,” says the historian Patricia Osmond, who curates
the villa’s archive — although it has nonetheless been emulated widely: Miami’s Villa Vizcaya and Pennsylvania’s Longwood
Gardens, both built in the first half of the 20th century, pay homage. Now run by a private trust, Villa Gamberaia was
recently given close to two million euros (about $2.3 million) for upgrades by the European Union and the Italian
government, making it one of the few private estates in Italy ever to receive such a grant. A portion of that money has gone
toward upgrading the water systems, in an effort to protect the shady, centuries-old refuge from climate change. — J.S.

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The grotto garden, part of the formal Italianate garden at Villa A grid of the reflecting pools and shrubs at Villa Gamberaia. Courtesy of Villa
Gamberaia. Chris Hawes/GAP Photos Gamberaia
Needleman: It’s the most magical garden. It’s not a very auspicious site — it’s super narrow — but the use of space is fantastic.

Richardson: I agree. In fact, Villa Gamberaia is my favorite garden in the world.

Benech: It’s a divine place on a perfectly human scale.

20. Les Jardins de Marqueyssac in Vézac, France

An abundance of topiary at Les Jardins de Marqueyssac in Vézac, France. © Andrea Jones/Garden Exposures

Of all the formal gardens in Europe, none showcase topiary quite as exuberantly — some might say obsessively — as
Marqueyssac. On this hilltop property overlooking the Dordogne Valley, more than 150,000 boxwoods are hand-clipped into a
variety of fanciful silhouettes: Swirls, buns and swooping hedges form pathways; brick-shaped shrubs seem to spill like
Legos down a slope; leafy lollipops appear at random. The garden began as the vision of the property’s onetime owner,
Julien de Cerval, who, after inheriting it from his family in the 1860s, was inspired by trips to Italy to plant and shape
boxwoods by the thousands. After his death in l893, the landscape languished until the 1990s, when the new owner, Kléber
Rossillon, a former engineer whose company maintains a dozen cultural heritage sites throughout France, revived many of
the original shrubs, filled in holes and — lacking de Cerval’s original design plans — clipped the shrubs into shapes of his
own imagining. While topiary remains the star attraction, Rossillon has added other surprises to the 54-acre garden,
including several waterfalls, quirky contemporary sculptures and an allosaurus dinosaur skeleton. To fully appreciate the
whole endeavor, visitors can follow pathways leading to various viewpoints, including one that overlooks hundreds of
boxwood mounds in shapes that mimic the rolling hills of the landscape beyond. — M.C.

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A boxwood-lined path at Les Jardins de Marqueyssac. Jérôme Galland Boxwood topiary under the maple and oak trees at Les Jardins de
Marqueyssac. Jérôme Galland
Delavan: It’s minimalist in its limited plant selection and color palette but still manages to feel romantic. In the 19th century, the owner planted
thousands of boxwoods — a lot of these gardens were made by people who were kind of obsessive. I think there are 150,000 boxwoods now and
they’re trimmed super tightly but rounded. It looks almost like flocks of sheep.

Richardson: It’s an example of a topiary garden on a grand scale that somehow retains the charm and character of a private residence. It’s not
overwhelmed by whimsy.

21. Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy

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A view of the fish ponds from the top of the Fountain of Neptune at Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy. Charles Hawes/GAP Photos
Reeling from a failed bid for the papacy, yet awarded the governorship in Tivoli as a consolation, Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este
wanted to build an extravagant estate that would secure his legacy. The resulting 16th-century gardens, conceived of by the
architect Pirro Ligorio, not only achieved Cardinal d’Este’s goal, but went on to influence the design of landscapes
throughout Europe. Water features have always been the highlight at Villa d’Este’s garden, which has been built upon by
successive owners. Today, there are 51 fountains and nymphaea, 398 spouts and 64 waterfalls or cascades across its seven
terraced acres, with water streaming down stairs, pouring into long, decorative canals and springing up around classical
sculptures. It’s even been inventively manipulated to power machines that produce the sounds of birds or organ music in
some fountains. Now preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Villa d’Este remains such a spectacle today that one
nobleman’s quote from 1569 still resonates: “Wherever you look, springs gush forth in such a variety of ways and with such
splendor of design that everywhere else on earth of this kind is far inferior.” — M.C.

A 16th-century plan showing the layout of the Villa d’Este gardens. Etienne DuPérac’s “Tivoli Palace and Gardens,” from “Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae” (1573),
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941

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“Villa d’Este, Tivoli” (1869) by Ascan Lutteroth. Bridgeman Images A row of fountains at Villa d’Este as seen in a 1936 photograph. Smith
Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Needleman: Some of our other Italian gardens are very classical Renaissance and this must be Baroque. It’s a little over-the-top.

Mori: Very different. It’s a water garden with scores of fountains all running on just gravity — a masterpiece of hydraulic engineering. Science and
natural beauty are integrated. And the sound is exquisite! My landscape professor in architecture school had an amazing lecture all about the
acoustical experience of the fountains there.

22. Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo, Italy

One of about 40 stone sculptures at Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo, Italy. Courtesy of Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo

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Elaborate fountains and parterres may be hallmarks of Italy’s Renaissance-era landscapes, but at the 16th-century garden
Sacro Bosco, about 40 miles northwest of Rome, the most well-known feature is less romantic: a giant, gaping stone mouth
with stubby fangs and an inscription below them reading “Ogni pensiero vola” (“Every thought flies”). The Mouth of Hell, as
it’s known, is one of about 40 stone monsters and structures carved on-site under the direction of the architect Pirro Ligorio
and the property’s 16th-century owner, Pier Francesco Orsini. The intention behind the sculptures — which range from a
three-headed hound of Hades to a curiously tilted house — is a mystery. Some believe the garden’s gothic leanings reflect
Orsini’s grief after the death of his wife; others contend that he was simply a well-read eccentric looking to impress guests
with his references to Greek mythology and literature. While the garden lay abandoned after his death in 1585, it was
rediscovered by writers and artists in the 1930s and ’40s (most notably Salvador Dalí) and purchased in 1954 by the
entrepreneur Giovanni Bettini, who saw its potential as a tourist attraction. Under the stewardship of his children and
grandchildren today, Sacro Bosco’s seven wooded acres are open to the public, with labyrinthine paths that encourage
visitors to get lost in its eerie beauty. — M.C.

“The Mouth of Hell” at Sacro Bosco.

Courtesy of Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo

Sargeant: This is really a sculpture garden, but I don’t think that should exclude it, or any other garden that is defined as that, from our list.
Obviously a garden is about plants, but it’s also about creating atmospheric spaces outside for people to enjoy — somewhere to sit and have a
conversation or maybe, like in the ancient Greek tradition, to just think. It’s the same thing with Japanese gardens, where they feature rocks. Of
course, plants are important in creating those spaces, but plants don’t have to be preponderant.

Richardson: And it’s wonderful for children. I took my boys there when they were 10 and 12. I mean, look at that mouth! And no one really
understands what the symbolism is. It’s a mystery.

23. Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte in Maincy, France

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The central basin of the formal French garden at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte in Maincy, France, which serves as the main axis of the garden. © Château
de Vaux-le-Vicomte

Although he died at the turn of the 18th century, André le Nôtre remains France’s most celebrated landscape designer. And
while he’s best known for masterminding the grounds of Versailles, many believe that the garden at Château de Vaux-le-
Vicomte, begun 20 years earlier than Versailles, was actually his finest work. Widely considered a masterpiece of formal
Baroque design, the garden is laid out around a 17th-century limestone château in the jardins à la Francais style, which was
dedicated to imposing symmetry on nature. Spanning more than 80 acres of former woodland, the project stretches out
along a nearly two-mile-long central axis lined with matching rows of pools, fountains and parterres. Owing to the
prevalence of boxwood disease, the original parterre de broderie, with its ornate swirls of hedging inspired by 17th-century
embroidery patterns, was replaced in 2019 with a contemporary artwork, “Rubans Éphémères” (“Ephemeral Ribbons”) by
the French artist Patrick Hourcade, which mimics the intertwining lines of Le Nôtre’s design using flat sheets of aluminum.
The best time to visit Vaux-le-Vicomte is on Saturdays at sunset between late May and the end of September, when the
park’s 20 fountains, controlled by the original 17th-century hydraulic system, are turned on, treating onlookers to a dramatic
water show. — C.F.

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An aluminum installation, “Ephemeral Ribbons” (2019) by Patrick Hourcade, has replaced the diseased boxwood shrubs at Château de Vaux-le-
Vicomte. © Lourdel and Chicurel

A 17th-century engraving by Israël Silvestre of the Petites Cascades at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Sepia Times/Universal Images/Getty Images

Mori: There’s a lot of work with perspective in the design. It has distortions: You think a body of water is oval, but as you get closer you realize it’s
circular. As an architect, I think the way they constructed the total experience is brilliant.

Benech: Approaching from the terrace of the house, you have the feeling that the garden is going up while you’re actually going down.

Mori: You can’t photograph it well because it’s all about illusion. The cameras can’t capture it. And that’s the reason to go visit.

Richardson: It’s better than Versailles, isn’t it?

Mori: Yes, I think so. It’s a precedent for Versailles.

24. Villa Silvio Pellico-Vigna Barolo in Moncalieri, Italy

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Clipped hedging around a reflecting pool at Villa Silvio Pellico-Vigna Barolo in Turin, Italy. © Emanuele & Raimonda Gamna
Set between cedar trees on a hill next to Turin, Vigna Barolo was built in the 18th century and was owned for a time by the
Marquess and Marchioness of Barolo, who used it as a summer house. (The celebrated writer Silvio Pellico was their
onetime secretary and librarian there.) After the death of the marchioness, it served for a time as an orphanage before
falling into disrepair. In 1948, when Umberta Nasi Ajmone-Marsan purchased the place, the gardens were neglected and the
front lawn ended in an abrupt 20-foot drop. Ajmone-Marson, a granddaughter of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, enlisted the
services of the British landscape architect Russell Page, who was making a garden for her cousin Gianni and his wife,
Marella Agnelli. Page’s preference for classical formality over the more cottagey leanings of his homeland were perfectly
suited to the brief for this site — that the formal part of the garden should be enjoyed as a view from the house. Sketching
ideas over two years, Page settled on a cruciform layout: A vertical axis of clipped evergreens leads the eye through a double
parterre, past a reflecting pool and toward a labyrinth of low hedging. The square pool at the garden’s axis is flanked by a
simple pool on either side, executed with characteristic understatement. To address the steep gradient from the front lawn,
Page designed a double stone staircase that’s hardly visible when seen from above. The overall result is a view of the garden
from the villa that is, as intended, sublime. — K.W.

The facade of the 18th-century Villa Silvio Pellico-Vigna Barolo. © The garden at Villa Silvio Pellico-Vigna Barolo, designed by the British
Emanuele & Raimonda Gamna landscape architect Russell Page. © Emanuele & Raimonda Gamna

Needleman: It’s a great example of Russell Page’s work.

Mori: Yes, it’s wonderful.

Delavan: I love the compactness of this design, and how meticulous all the details are.

Brazilian: It reminds me so much of his garden at the Frick Collection in New York, which Page also designed [in 1977]. It’s so pleasingly
symmetrical, with a similar reflecting pool at its center.

Benech: But the garden has changed a lot since Page did it. There are no more santolinas, and the conifers he planted to hide some of the lower
buildings are blocking the view now. But the garden is wonderful.

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25. Edward James Sculpture Garden, Las Pozas, in Xilitla, Mexico

The Bamboo Palace at Las Pozas in Xilitla, Mexico. Courtesy of the Pedro y Elena Foundation/Google Arts & Culture

Created in the 1960s by the wealthy British expat, art patron and eccentric Edward James (whom Dalí reportedly called
“crazier than all the Surrealists put together”), this otherworldly sculpture garden features 34 follies across 22 acres of
rainforest in central Mexico. Here, archways are arranged at chaotic angles among enormous concrete mushrooms, snakes
and orchids, while elaborate, nonsensical structures composed of neo-Classical columns and stairways lead to nowhere and
have names like “The House of Three Stories That Could Be Five” or “The House With a Roof Like a Whale.” The landscape
is just as attention-grabbing, with both native and cultivated plants like orchids, giant ferns and rosewood trees engulfing the
sculptures, near which natural waterfalls flow and pool, reflecting strange silhouettes. After James’s death in 1984, his once-
private garden was managed first by the family of a longtime friend and then, starting in 2007, by an environmental
conservation foundation, which restored its structures and opened it to the public. Today, with minimal signage and visitors
only permitted as part of a guided tour, exploring the landscape still feels like stepping into a dream — or, as James called it,
a “Surrealist Xanadu.” — M.C.

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Las Pozas’s Don Eduardo Square and Bromeliad Fountain. Courtesy of the Pedro y Elena Foundation/Google Arts & Culture
Sargeant: I love gardens like this, with sculpture and with interesting buildings — that interplay between the built environment and landscape is
fascinating and beautiful. Because of the climate, a lot of the plants look as though they’re taking over the sculptural pieces, which gives the
garden a very intertwined look.

Needleman: He used the mood that a tropical junglelike garden can create in harmony with his surrealist sculptures. The two elements are working
hand-in-hand to create something mysterious and magical.

Richardson: I agree with what everyone has said but … it was built as a ruin — and ruins are notorious for falling down.

Benech: Still, I’d like to go one day.

Sargeant: Take your hard hat, Louis!

At top: © Carol Casselden; Jérôme Galland; Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria; © Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte; Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty
Images; Howard Sooley

A correction was made on May 6, 2025: An earlier version of this article misidentified the location of Longwood Gardens; it is
in Pennsylvania, not Delaware.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected]. Learn more

Alexa Brazilian is a contributing editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

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