21 Beautiful Gardens Around The World Every Plant Lover Should Visit

Please take me to all of these plants.

Instagram: @woke_up_in_ Instagram: @jardinmajorellemarrakech / Via Instagram: @epsilondelta.pix Instagram: @mozilla0211

1. Jardin Majorelle — Marrakech, Morocco

Instagram: @officialjardinmajorelle

This garden oasis in Marrakech was designed by French painter, Jacques Majorelle. Ultramarine blue walls are a delightful backdrop for the bright green palms, cacti, tropical flowers. Just try not to post this on Instagram, I absolutely dare you.

2. Allan Gardens Conservatory — Toronto, Canada

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This is a big greenhouse inside the Toronto Botanical Garden filled with cacti, palms, and other tropical plants. And it's open year-round, so if you're in Toronto, rest assured you can escape to this balmy plant paradise even when it's miserable outside.

3. The Ruth Bancroft Garden — Walnut Creek, California, USA

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This "dry garden oasis" — created by its namesake Ruth Bancroft, who lived to be 109 — is home to a huge variety of succulents and other drought-tolerant plants. You might like to know that the first ever aeonium succulent Ruth bought for the garden in the 1950s is still alive and kicking today, and its name is "Glenn". Go say hi.

4. Longwood Gardens — Philadelphia, USA

Instagram: @longwoodgardens

There are at least two places you can walk through a corridor known as "Fern Passage" — in my dreams, and at Longwood Gardens. Tickets are sold out to the former but you can visit the latter nearly anytime you like.

5. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation — Dumfries, Scotland

Instagram: @jrdfrnk

If you love plants and science, then you're going to want to visit this private garden — open to the public only one day each year. Here you can wander past landscapes, sculptures, water features, and architectural structures that all serve to tell stories about our cosmos, fractal geometry, Quarks, and the creation of the universe. Basically: if Neil deGrasse Tyson was a garden.

6. Jardim Botânico — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Picture a lush paradise where you can surround yourself with royal palms, parrots, orchid houses, fluffy-eared marmosets, giant Amazonian lilies, and sometimes toucans. Just some of the things to find at this dreamy garden at the foot of Corcovado Mountain. I'm on my way!

7. Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca — Oaxaca, Mexico

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This Ethnobotanical Garden in southern Mexico explores the relationship between plants, people, and the cultural traditions of Oaxaca. The tall cactus corridor gets a lot of love on the 'gram, but there's a lot of other beauty worth admiring here, too.

8. Le Château de Villandry — Loire Valley, France

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Built during the Renaissance, the Chateau of Villandry is also famous for its surrounding gardens. Picture yourself wandering through the ornamental hornbeam hedge mazes, reciting French poetry to your companions and you're basically here.

9. Hortus Botanicus — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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This garden is in the Plantage district of Amsterdam, and lush plantage is what you get when you enter. In the 17th century De Hortus mostly grew medicinal plants for the education of doctors and pharmacists. Today, this is a good place to go if you're sad and need some plant therapy, also known as "microdosing on nature," or "forest bathing" if you live in Japan.

10. The Butchart Gardens — British Columbia, Canada

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A fairy-tale place where selfie sticks are banned and quiet voices are encouraged. Take a left after Dragon Fountain, walk through the romantic rose-covered arches and find me on the other side, in the "Bog Garden", eating cheesecake with an ogre or something.

11. Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden — Cape Town, South Africa

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You could use Kirstenbosch Gardens as a starting point to hike up Table Mountain, or just wander for hours and admire the greenery. A long tree canopy walkway will take you from forest floor to the treetops, where you can take in the mountain views and the sweet sounds of South African sugarbirds, and almost forget how dead you feel inside. Plant therapy.

12. Lotusland — Santa Barbara, USA

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Lotusland is known as one of the ten best gardens in the world, and I haven't been there but they do appear to have a good collection of cacti so I'm willing to consider this claim. The land was purchased and transformed into a garden in the 1940s by a Polish opera singer and socialite, and named after a sacred lotus that blooms in one of the garden's ponds.

13. Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden — Tromsø, Norway

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This is the most northerly botanical garden in the world — an otherworldly place that's home to things like fragile Arctic buttercups, Himalayan blue poppies, and Greek cushion flowers. None of which you can find in your average warm-climate garden, and all of which sound magical. This is also a good place to find Norwegian good boys, as pictured.

14. Blue Mountains Botanic Garden — Mount Tomah, Australia

Instagram: @bluemountainsbotanicgarden

If you're in Australia, a trip to the Royal Botanic Gardens right on Sydney Harbour is always a peaceful delight. But less than two hours' drive from Sydney lies another gem: the garden's cooler climate sister. Here you can walk through ancient rainforest and take a picnic on a hill with views of the famous Blue Mountains. The air is good up here, and it is fresh.

15. The New York Botanical Garden — New York City, USA

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If you're in NYC this is by far the best place to escape the noise and the fumes for a few hours of quiet meditation. It's also a place that wants to encourage us to notice and improve our "plant blindness" — plants keep us alive and make the world beautiful, and they deserve more respect for their labors. Don't ever disrespect a plant, I mean it.

16. Kenroku-en — Kanazawa, Japan

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We all know that Japanese gardens are special — and this is supposedly one of Japan's three most beautiful. Spring and autumn seem like the loveliest and most colorful times to visit, but this garden promises beauty and tranquility all year round.

17. Jardín Escultórico Edward James, Las Pozas – Xilitla, Mexico

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In the 1940s, a writer and eccentric art collector called Edward James bought a property in the dense jungle of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and turned it into a surrealist sculpture garden. It's the otherworldly hidden jungle city you might lose yourself in whilst inside a really good dream — after waiting a couple of hours to get in, because it's high season and this place isn't a secret anymore. Still, worth it.

18. St Dunstan in the East — London, United Kingdom

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After the Church of St Dunstan was devastated in the Blitz of 1941 and was never rebuilt by the Anglican Church, the City of London gave the plants permission to reclaim the space, turning the ruins into a charming public garden. If your religion is foliage, then this is the perfect place to come and worship.

19. Gardens by the Bay — Singapore

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This magical place is made up of tranquil landscapes, tropical conservatories, and extravagant floral exhibitions along Marina Bay in Singapore. The centrepiece is the iconic Supertree Grove — a series of giant steel "trees" covered in vines, which light up after dark. It's all very futuristic and all very worth visiting if you're in Singapore and happen to enjoy plants.

20. Les Jardins de Marqueyssac — Dordogne, France

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Come for the topiary plants that look like giant green dumplings, and stay a while longer for the panoramic views of French countryside. These "hanging gardens" sit at the top of a hill that overlooks the beautiful villages and valleys of the Périgord region. Perfect place for a romantique stroll.

21. Botanic Gardens — Belfast, Ireland

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Again, a beautiful, tranquil place with lush green spaces and good green plants. Honestly I don't know what else to tell you. Gardens are good, and you will feel better if you spend more time in them.