Are These the World’s Most Beautiful Gardens?

Behind every beautiful garden is a talented designer. Discover some of the most gorgeous gardens in the world and learn about the designers who created them.

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September 23, 2021

By: Julie Martens Forney

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Showstopping Gardens Around the World

Beautiful gardens take root as an idea in the mind of a designer, who can look at a space and see its potential for splendor. Celebrate the gift of gorgeous garden designs by taking a tour of some of the world’s most famous — and lovely — gardens.

The Garden Book

Take a step behind the beauty of gardens to discover the designers who create them. The newly revised and updated edition of The Garden Book showcases the work of more than 500 garden designers and gardens in more than 45 countries. Whether you love gardening, design, history or inspirational scenery, you’ll savor touring the timeless gardens from around the world pictured in the pages of this book. Here's a glimpse of what you'll see.

Vlinderhof, The Netherlands

Find inspiration for your own corner of paradise in the Vlinderhof Garden in Utrecht, Netherlands. “Vlinderhof” means “butterfly garden” in Dutch. This community-maintained garden was designed by Piet Oudolf, designer of New York’s High Line Park, the 9/11 Gardens of Remembrance at the Battery and Chicago’s Lurie Garden. Vlinderhoff covers 1.25 acres and displays what’s called the New Perennial style (or Dutch Wave). It features drifts of perennials and grasses that stir in the breeze, creating waves of color, height and texture.

Villandry Potager, France

This world-famous Renaissance garden follows the style of a traditional French ornamental kitchen garden or potager. Designed by Dr. Joachim Carvallo in the early 20th century, the potager unfurls in nine boxwood-edged squares filled with a variety of tasty and colorful edible crops. Carvallo focused intently on choosing plant varieties for the garden, selecting those that offered delicious fare and eye-catching good looks. Typical potager varieties include blue leek, red cabbage and beetroot and carrots with bright green tops. Villandry is located in the French Loire Valley.

Karl Foerster Garden, Germany

Karl Foerster was a German nurseryman, plant breeder and garden designer. He first made a name for himself as a plantsman, eventually creating 650 new perennial cultivars, including many that are still popular today, such as Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldstrum’ and his namesake, ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'), a strongly upright grass with wheat colored seed heads. In 1912, he created his own garden, which is famous for its use of natural-looking drifts of perennials and ornamental grasses. That design is common today, but in 1912, garden style featured formal arrangements of roses and bedding plants, so Foerster’s design created waves in the garden world.

Lotusland, California

Though it's now a botanic garden, 37-acre Lotusland in Montecito came to life under the design eye of Madame Ganna Walska, a well-known Polish opera singer and socialite. She purchased the estate in 1941 and spent the next 43 years transforming the existing Italianate and Spanish gardens with elaborate plant collections. She created rooms within the garden, working with a series of garden designers and botanists to arrange dramatic plantings, like these arching aloes that line a path leading to the Abalone Shell Pond, a converted swimming pool.

Garden Of Babur, Afghanistan

The Bagh-e Babur sprawls over 27 acres in Kabul, Afghanistan, today providing a refreshing green space for city residents. Designed in the 16th Century by Emperor Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, the garden later became his final resting place in 1544. His tomb sits at the highest point in the garden. A series of terraces and a marble water course cascade down the hill from the tomb. The richly planted terraces sprout grassy orchards of mixed fruit trees, including cherry, quince, apricot and mulberry. Emperor Babur introduced Persian terraced garden design to Afghanistan and later India.

Aïn Kassimou Garden, Morocco

When renowned garden designer to some of the richest people on the planet Madison Cox designs a garden, he strives to create an environment that seems to have sprouted naturally in place. That approach extends to plant choices, as well as architectural elements, like this Bill Willis-designed pavilion. The 45-acre garden at Aïn Kassimou is a private garden. Papyrus and water lilies fill the pool, which is flanked with rows of richly fragrant Crinum lilies. Cox has designed many private gardens, including Michael Bloomberg's and the Litchfield, Connecticut, garden of philanthropist Anne Bass.

Charlottehaven, Denmark

Known in Danish as Charlottehaven, this community garden reflects a common design theme for Northern European housing units, which are typically arranged around a central courtyard. Designer Stig L. Andersson transformed the center space into a salt meadow, designing the garden to provide interest from both overhead and ground level views. Clumps of ornamental grasses fill Corten steel-edged planting beds and give the garden movement and year-round interest. The grass mix includes blue fescue (Festuca glauca), moor grass (Sesleria) and purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea). Curving paths and planting beds form spaces that separate and enclose, providing areas for the community to gather with a degree of privacy.

Orpheus at Boughton, United Kingdom

A great garden can be as deceptively simple as a clever landform, like the Orpheus garden. British landscape architect Kim Wilkie often fuses modern style with historical landscapes, as seen in this 21st-century garden blended into the existing framework of the early 18th-century Park at Boughton House. Orpheus is an inverted pyramid, sunk into the earth 23 feet and open to the elements. In matching the pyramid proportions to an Olympian Mount found on the grounds, Wilkie retells the tale of Greek mythological musician Orpheus, who descended to Hades to retrieve his beloved wife. A grass path spirals down to the dark pool.

Katsura Imperial Villa, Japan

The Katsura Imperial Villa presents a classic example of Japanese garden style. Designed by Prince Toshihito around 1624, the 11-acre gardens are primarily an elaborate tea garden surrounded by beautiful plantings of maples, pines and ferns. A human-made 2-acre lake includes islands, stylized pebble beaches and 16 bridges. Stepping stone paths lined with stone lanterns give the garden after-dark appeal. The garden showcases stunning seasonal beauty perfect for meditation, and four pavilions that offer the ideal spot for a Japanese tea ceremony.

Beiqijia Technology Park, China

Creating healthy living environments in sustainable public urban spaces is what American designer Martha Schwartz does, and her aesthetic is on full display in the Beiqijia Tehcnology Park in the Changping district north of Beijing. This space unites office, retail and residential elements with a central green zone. A combination of raised and sunken gardens creates pockets of greenery where visitors can relax, either on bed edges or benches. By increasing the ratio of vegetation to paving, Schwartz reduces the urban heat island effect. Water features help cool warm summer winds.

Gravetye Manor Garden, United Kingdom

Over 35 acres of beautiful grounds surround Gravetye Manor in West Sussex. William Robinson designed the historic gardens in 1885, when typical Victorian garden style featured formal lines and beds cut into lawns. Robinson swept those traditions aside with his informal, naturalistic designs featuring drifts of hardy plants. Today this garden style looks familiar — we know it as an “English garden.” At the time of its creation, it broke all the rules. Robinson’s persistence with this design practice helped birth the style embraced so widely in today's gardens.

Great Dixter, United Kingdom

Christopher Lloyd, garden designer and writer, lived and gardened at Great Dixter in East Sussex. His father, Nathaniel Lloyd, planted yew hedges to create a simple framework around the garden that complemented the family's 15th-century home. Lloyd Jr. retained the hedges and spent the next 50 years painting vivid scenes using plants as his palette. He loved to mix textures, like these topiary yew peacocks perched among drifts of spring color. This area is known as the Peacock Garden and in spring includes tulips, forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) and white sweet rocket (Hesperis albiflora).

Salamanca, Spain

A private residence in Salamanca, Spain, showcases the design handiwork of Madrid-based husband-and-wife team Miguel Urquijo and Renate Kastner. Their design style celebrates respect for nature and the Mediterranean landscape with touches of formality woven throughout. The result is an atmospheric garden that’s sustainable and blends with surrounding environs. These island planting beds feature lavender domes, phlomis, sedum, wallflowers and elaeagnus. The shorter plantings make the most of the grand panorama beyond the garden.

Monticello, Virginia

Nestled into the rolling hills of Charlottesville, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson’s 5,000-acre estate, Monticello, is a horticultural paradise. Jefferson designed the gardens, which include a vegetable garden, orchards, a vineyard, flower gardens and groves of hardwood trees. A scientist at heart, Jefferson loved to experiment with newly discovered plants. His 2-acre vegetable garden terrace included 330 varieties of 89 species of vegetables and herbs, a veritable melting pot of flavor, spice and color. A garden pavilion holds court in the center of the garden, giving excellent views of the vegetable terrace, 8-acre orchard and berry squares.