Great Gardens from Around the World

A Series on Gardens We Have Visited

Visiting gardens for us is like collecting plants. We can never see enough or have enough.

Quite regularly, daughter Susan and I go hunting for plants, whether we need them or not. It occurred to us one day that if we prowled through gardens, we could probably discover more plants that we didn’t know we needed.

As a courtesy to some of our readers who also like to collect plants, we are compiling the best of our pictures and organizing them into slide shows, with commentary on each garden. If you are ready for an armchair visit to a garden, go to the sidebar and under Great Gardens From Around the World, find a garden and click on it.

We’ve poked through all kinds of gardens in all kinds of settings. World famous classics. Hidden gems. Formal gardens with breathtaking views. Simple homespun gardens. Sometimes we find great possibilities in untamed waysides strung out with wildflowers and weeds.

We’ve seen gardens on rainy, misty, cloudy days or on sweltering days when haze hung heavy. And sometimes we hit lovely, sunny days when we could ramble for hours. Well, we ramble in the rain, too.

They’ve been an inspiration to us, not directly, because, like fingerprints and people, no two gardens are alike. Maybe it’s a grand vista, or a special planting, or a ravishing pergola that hypnotizes us into wanting to see more. There is always another secret around the bend.

So we come back to our own gardens energized and inspired. Suddenly we need another plant here (or two or three or more), or an arbor over there, or maybe some stepping stones. . .or a painted chair.

Of course, there is the small matter of budgets and staffing. We’ve always managed to scrounge money for garden projects–so far. Bob the Builder, whom you may have already met in previous stories, and Mike, Susan’s husband, are both pretty agreeable to doing the necessary heavy work, though occasionally they ask us to please remember that staff  is, shall we say, limited? and that there are other activities in life besides digging and planting–and replanting. Only occasionally,  though.

So, if you have a spare moment, come along for some armchair visits to great gardens, as we add new ones from time to time. You just might see a plant, or two or three, that you never knew you needed.