15 Garden Getaways You’ll Want On Your Bucket List

Some gardens aren’t just green places—they’re living museums of culture and creativity. Across five continents, these curated escapes blend history with design, offering something far more profound than pretty petals. Let’s admire 20 such gardens where power, peace, and passion have all taken root.

Keukenhof: Lisse, the Netherlands

Bursting open eight weeks a year, Keukenhof unveils over seven million blooming bulbs across 79 acres of color-coded artistry. After allowing public entry in 1950, it has earned worldwide fame as one of the most beautiful spring gardens. Miss it once, and you’ll wait another year.

Ritsurin Garden: Shikoku Island, Japan

Originating in the early 17th century, Ritsurin’s six reflective ponds mirror a carefully choreographed world of balance and stillness. Japan’s “Special Place of Scenic Beauty” invites you to walk its trails like a breathing scroll of Japanese design. Autumn paints it in amber silence, one leaf at a time.

Butchart Gardens: British Columbia, Canada

Reclamation takes root here. Butchart’s transformation from a limestone quarry in 1904 to a 55-acre floral fantasy proves nature never quits. Stroll through fireworks-lit evenings or rose-rich afternoons. It’s not just a garden; it’s living proof that design can bloom from the bones of industry.

Desert Botanical Garden: Phoenix, Arizona, USA

Not all gardens need rain. Established in 1939, this 140-acre living exhibit showcases over 50,000 desert dwellers, from towering saguaros to alien-like agaves. Its conservation mission preserves fragile ecosystems under brutal conditions. Survival, here, becomes a sculpture with thorns, curves, and silent lessons in strength.

The Gardens Of Versailles: Versailles, France

Power once played out here. Spanning more than 2,000 acres, the Versailles gardens, crafted in 1661 by Andre Le Notre, reflect absolute monarchy in botanical symmetry. Music and fountains perform weekly shows. You’re not touring greenery. You’re stepping through history’s most opulent outdoor theater.

Magnolia Plantation: South Carolina, USA

Founded in 1679, this riverside refuge near Charleston embraces a romantic garden philosophy. Here, camellias and azaleas don’t align—they meander. Spring’s peak bloom brings color so thick it feels like walking through memory. The place oozes Southern hospitality in foliage instead of words.

Gardens By The Bay: Marina Bay District, Singapore

Singapore’s Supertrees don’t just light up. They live. Launched in 2012, this futuristic botanical park merges ecology with engineering across 250 acres. Built on reclaimed land, Gardens by the Bay transforms infrastructure into artistry. At sunset, it becomes a bioluminescent forest, part garden, part science fiction.

Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver, Colorado, USA

Elevation alters everything. At approximately 5,400 feet, this 24-acre sanctuary offers alpine gardens, a Japanese courtyard, and xeriscape marvels designed for dry climates. Expect flora adapted for thin air and intense light. People come for the altitude and stay for the unexpected beauty in every flower bed.

Claude Monet’s Garden: Giverny, France

It’s a palette of petals. Designed by the painter in 1983, this garden wasn’t just an inspiration but a studio. The Water Lily Pond still whispers about Monet’s fascination with light. “Color is my daylong obsession,” he once wrote. That obsession still hangs in the Giverny air.

Kew Gardens: London, UK

Science and serenity blend within these 300 acres of plant archives and Victorian glasshouses. Home to over 50,000 plant species, Kew became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. The 59-foot-high Treetop Walkway lets you commune with canopies above crowds, above time, above it all.

Japanese Garden: Portland, Oregon, USA

Harmony waits in the gravel, the still water, and the silence. Opened in 1967 and designed by master Takuma Tono, this garden is often called “the most authentic outside Japan.” Autumn ignites its layered trees. This one’s not meant to impress but to still you.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Every April, 200+ cherry trees awaken the city in soft pink waves. Since 1911, this garden has offered New Yorkers space to breathe between petals and poems. “It’s the moment the city blushes,” wrote a local poet. Just don’t blink, it’s over in a gust.

Kirstenbosch: Cape Town, South Africa

Rarely does a botanical garden grow exclusively from native roots. Founded in 1913, Kirstenbosch shelters over 7,000 species, including the endangered cycads and fire-adapted fynbos. The canopy walkway floats like a serpent above it all. This is a legacy written in plant DNA.

Chateau De Villandry: Loire Valley, France

Symmetry became a spectacle in these ornamental kitchen gardens redesigned in the early 20th century. Villandry’s Renaissance revival shows that vegetables can perform in rows as beautifully as any flower. Step into geometry and season it with scent—lettuce and lavender coexist here, forming checkerboards.

Lan Su Chinese Garden: Portland, Oregon, USA

Poetry, philosophy, and plants speak in whispers across the garden’s bridges and corridors. The waters reflect Ming dynasty architecture in this gem, which was completed in 2000 by Suzhou artisans. It’s a place of reflection—literally and metaphorically. What you see here depends on where you stand.