Kauai, New Zealand, Spain

Kauai, known as "Hawaii's Garden Island," is the fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands and proudly claims the wettest place on earth, Mount Waialeale. This cloud-enshrouded peak receives an average of 400 inches of rain every year.

One of the treasures of the island is the National Tropical Botanical Garden, a 186-acre park containing more than 5,000 varieties of plants and flowers, some native to the island. A living museum like this is important for preserving biodiversity; two-thirds of the world's species of flowering plants live in tropical zones, and many are endangered by development. Of the 400 species of orchids grown in the park, half are either endangered or extinct in the wild. Another protected flower that thrives in the park is the native yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei) --Hawaii's state flower.

The Allerton Garden adjoins the National Tropical Botanical Garden and came under its management in 1990. The Allerton Garden features several varieties of native ginger plants and anthuriums, as well as striking snake cactus imported from the Carribean. The gnarled roots of the massive Morton Bay fig trees are so eerie that Steven Spielberg used them as a backdrop in his dinosaur epic, Jurassic Park.

The National Tropical Botanic Garden houses plants that are rare, endangered, ornamental, economically useful. It serves as a place to "grow attitudes" about botanic preservation, communicating information to each generation about the importance of preserving different species of plants.

Monavale
Christchurch, New Zealand

The Casa de Pilatos is a late 15th-century Moorish palace in southern Spain which has been restored to 19th-century splendor in its house and gardens. Architecturally, the palace combines Christian Gothic, Renaissance and baroque styles and filters them through a Moorish sensibility. The gardens feature elaborate gates, stucco walls and decorative tiles dating back to the 16th-century Moorish rulers of southern Spain, who observed the Muslim religion. In this garden philosophy, the patio space provides a safe haven from the heat and discomforts of the street, an oasis and even a glimpse of paradise. The water splashing and running in the garden's pools delights the eye and ear, and the sky overhead connotes the heaven to which the Moors might aspire if they practiced Islam faithfully.

The Casa de Pilatos had running water as far back as 1483 when the Moors connected it with a Roman aqueduct. Its stucco walls are now painted with deep colors such as ochre and yellow, as they would have been in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. (In the 1920's, the house took a brief detour to white, as that was the fashionable color in Seville at the time.)

The Casa de Pilatos's flowers include angel trumpets and roses--though it is primarily a garden of foliage and trees. Boxwood parterres line the "little garden" beside the house, and palms and citrus trees fill the "large garden," formerly the kitchen garden of the palace. The property contains Roman era statues and several beautiful fountains. Container plants in decorative clay pots brighten the entire garden, resting along fountain walls, and mounted high up on balconies. Container plants can provide a lovely Spanish accent to your own garden; group several of them in one spot to bring color and interest to barren spaces.