The world’s oldest-known botanic garden still in its original location is in northern Italy. The Orto Botanico in Padua was set up in 1545 by the Venetian Republic to grow medicinal plants. As ever-more-exotic foreign plants were brought back from the distant countries with which the republic traded, a tall circular wall had to be erected around the garden to protect its precious contents, and fierce punishments – even exile – were exacted on plant thieves. Over the centuries, the garden has inspired similarly fascinating and valuable plant collections around the world, from the Chelsea Physic Garden in central London to sprawling sites showcasing an entire continent’s plant life. Now a Unesco World Heritage Site, the Orto Botanico continues to attract visitors from all over the world. As anyone already drawn into the fascinating orbit of the plant world knows, there are few interests as addictive. Long-term, so much to learn; short-term, so much beauty to gaze upon.
Jordan is the latest country to open a national botanic garden and Oman won’t be far behind. In the meantime, there are plenty of gardens to discover or revisit. Close contenders that didn’t quite make the top 10 include the Missouri and Brooklyn botanic gardens in the United States, those in Rio, Tokyo, Ventnor on the Isle of Wight in England and the Andromeda Gardens in Barbados. Gardens which are only in bloom briefly, such as Italy’s Saussurea Alpine Garden and the Netherlands’ Keukenhof tulip gardens are also worth a visit, as are the hard-to-reach gardens such as the world’s most northerly and the arctic botanic garden in Tromso. Finally, privately run mini botanic collections such as the Ganna Walska Lotusland collection of cacti, cycads, aloes and aquatic plants in Santa Barbara. You can check out more via the Botanic Gardens Conservation International website (www.bgci.org).
For the plant addict, though, anywhere with a botanical garden is a place worth visiting. That’s true whether the garden is sprucely maintained by a proud legion of professionals or threadbare and neglected, as in Mauritius and Calcutta – in the latter case, there’s a pleasant melancholy to be savoured while wandering along the dusty old paths.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, England
The world’s best-known botanical garden was set up in 1759 as a pleasure garden for the royal court, but it’s been at the forefront of scientific and conservation work since the mid-19th century, when explorers were bringing back ever-more-exotic plant species as the British Empire expanded across the globe. Its 100-plus attractions range from the lakes and ponds of its Aquatic Garden, opened in 1909, with its fairy-tale expanses of water lilies that almost beg you to leap on them (not allowed, but at least not punished with exile) to the lofty, romantic Palm House. You can get thrilling views across the gardens from the grove of oaks, sweet chestnut and lime trees in the Arboretum, where the 18-metre-high, 200-metre Treetop Walkway has been erected, designed by the architects who conceived the London Eye on the Fibonacci numerical sequence often found in nature, including the mathematically intriguing design of fir cones.
• Entry £15 (Dh90); www.kew.org
Kirstenbosch and the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Africa
Behind every great botanical garden stand founders with foresight – not to mention legions of workers, such as the unsung 17th-century carpenter Leendert Cornelissen. After the Dutch East India Company laid claim to this spectacular expanse of forest and fynbos below Table Mountain in 1652, Cornelissen was charged with protecting its magnificent trees – stinkwood, yellowwood, Cape holly – from being hacked down for firewood. The area remained largely intact but untamed until the mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes – who bought Kirstenbosch in 1895 – bequeathed it to the government in 1902. It was set up as the National Botanic Garden in 1913, only for the First World War to pull away every gardener but one. The first director, Harold Pearson, is buried in the cobbled, shady Dell, the oldest section, and it’s hard to gaze on those trees and the world’s best collection of fynbos – South Africa’s native protea, ericas and restios – without sensing those who made the pleasure possible.
• Entry 50 South African rand (Dh16); www.sanbi.org/gardens/kirstenbosch
Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, Hawaii, US
Dan Lutkenhouse was certainly a founder with foresight. Ravished by the wild, tangled beauty of a 16-hectare plot of impenetrable oceanside jungle he found for sale while on holiday in 1977, he bought the land without any particular aim, then realised he could preserve an unspoilt part of Hawaii from more-mercenary developers. Selling his trucking business in San Francisco, he spent the next eight years with three local men, armed with cane knives, picks, shovels and a chainsaw, hacking away at thorn thickets, hewing paths out of lava rock, and three years uncovering a great waterfall. He opened the garden in 1984, and the mile-long, 90-minute walk through 2,000 species of tropical plants and trees has been delighting visitors ever since.
• Entry US$15 (Dh55); www.htbg.com
Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, US
Flashlight tours that let visitors see the desert flowers that bloom only in darkness are just one of the elements that distinguish this gem. Set up in 1939 by volunteers, and spread over 57 hectares, with 50,000 plant displays, this garden set out to be the world’s leading centre for the conservation of all the extraordinary forms of plant life that thrive in deserts. Despite the arid setting, it’s a lively place, still run largely by enthusiastic volunteers and with a programme of half-day courses suitable for visitors (vertical vegetable gardening, monarch-butterfly conservation, etc). March and April are good months to visit, when the wild flowers are blooming.
• Entry $22 (Dh81); www.dbg.org
Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan, Australia
The civic-minded Australia has numerous botanic gardens, but to see the largest collection of the country’s extraordinary natural plants there’s nowhere bigger or better than this. Founded in 1988, and located outside Sydney, it displays more than 4,000 native species – as intriguing and idiosyncratic as Australia’s animal life. Ironbarks, forest red gums, kurrajongs, large grey box and the Wollemi pine – the last of which had been only in fossilised form before its discovery here in 1994; the 55,000 trees alone make this worth the journey, even before you’ve started examining plants such as the flamboyantly elaborate Banksia ornata. The garden is also home to 160 bird species, plus wallabies, wallaroos and kangaroos.
• Free; www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au
Jordan Botanic Garden, Tell Ar-Rumman, Jordan
Jordan’s rich flora played a crucial role in the development of civilisation and may prove crucial again if climate changes take hold. It was the wild ancestors of almonds, apricots, barley, garlic, lentils, pistachios and wheat, all native to Jordan, that allowed nomads to roam beyond the Middle East. The driving force behind a garden and seed store to preserve and showcase these wild plants – which remain genetically much more robust and diverse than those cultivated over the centuries in the West and thus potentially crucial in feeding a ballooning global population – is Princess Basma bint Ali of Jordan, whose love of plants was fostered by accompanying her father to botanical gardens around the world. Funding from HSBC Investing in Nature got the garden off the ground, and the first visitors will be welcomed in 2016.
• Entry price TBC, www.royalbotanicgarden.org
Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago, US
The vivid beauty of the Midwest and relaxed style of the New American Garden movement is brilliantly on show here, year-round, with 26 gardens of more than 9, 000 species all of wild origin, collected from as far afield as Russia, Georgia, China, Japan, England and Germany, as well as locally, and planted so that there is always something spectacular in bloom. It’s spread over 156 hectares centred on the Great Basin lake and gardens. Bridges connect the different gardens, nine of them on islands, adding to a constant sense of delight and discovery. Winter might be a tough time to visit Chicago, with even daytime temperatures regularly dropping to minus 20°C, but the gardens are spectacular even under snow.
• Free; www.chicagobotanic.org
Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Gardens, Kyoto, Japan
Located close to the Imperial Palace and the chic shops on Kitayama Street, and thus easily added to a visit to Japan’s elegant second city, these gardens opened in 1924 and were turned over to crop production during the Second World War. Now, 12,000 species of plants and flowers, shrubs and trees are showcased. Large lawns punctuated by fountains and a vast greenhouse are standard enough, but one wanders through the exquisite individual gardens – a bamboo garden; peony, camellia, hydrangea, bonsai and cherry-tree gardens; a sunken garden; and the Nakaragi-no-Mori pond garden – wondering if the exquisite maintenance is carried out with nail scissors.
• Entry 200 Japanese yen (Dh7); www.pref.kyoto.jp
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland
One of the world’s oldest gardens, founded in 1670, this now occupies four separate sites around Scotland. Each has its own specialist collections. Inverleigh, a 28-hectare site a mile outside Edinburgh (pollution forced an exit from the city in 1763) has its massive Palmhouse, rock gardens, heather gardens, Alpine section and 3-million-species herbarium. Damp, mild Benmore has its conifers, rhododendrons, an avenue of giant redwoods and new fernery; Dawyck its fungi and cryptogamics; and the almost subtropical Logan its Southern Hemisphere plants. Against a backdrop of empty hills and vast sky, each provides a plant addict with a compelling reason to plan a Scottish holiday.
• Free; www.rbge.org.uk
Oaxaca Ethnobotanical Garden, Oaxaca, Mexico
Set on a 2-hectare site in downtown Oaxaca and centred on the 16th-century Santo Domingo monastery complex, this is a garden like no other, set up when the military billeted here moved out in 1993. The brainchild of the Mexican artist Francisco Toledo, it was devised to “show the interaction of plants and people” throughout the history of Oaxaca. Snaking through the garden is a path of naturally green soil from where you view a massive fountain spraying water dyed red with cochineal, grown from the local prickly pear cactus (and exported by the Spanish for use in Chinese silk, Persian carpets and paints used by Rembrandt and Van Gogh); a bathing pit once used by the monks and now shaded by soapberry, used to make soap; and, near the monastery library, a fig tree, the source of fine paper in pre-Columbian times. Because of thefts, visitors are now allowed in only on guided tours (in English on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays).
• Tours in English, 100 Mexican pesos (Dh27); www.jardinoaxaca.org.mx