The most fabulous gardens in Britain and on the Continent

Alhambra, Spain

The fabled patios of this Moorish fortress-palace in Granada, constructed between the 9th and 14th centuries, still retain an extraordinary sequestered atmosphere, especially if a visitor has the foresight to plan a visit to avoid the crowds. Spaces such as the Court of the Lions (late-14th century) are not gardens in the familiar sense, in that they do not contain plants, but the sight and sounds of water, the play of light and shadow and the decorative effects of the rich yet delicate carving and stucco-work turn these outdoor living rooms into works of art. Above the palace proper and across a gorge lies another palace complex, the Generalife, which contains more greenery and is not as formally organised. Its highlight is the celebrated long, rectangular pool adorned with arching fountains in the Patio de la Acequia.

La Bagatelle, France

This Parisian park was created round a small château in the 1770s as the result, it is said, of a bet between Marie-Antoinette and the Comte d'Artois, whom she challenged to create a garden in two months flat. The Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie then took on the project and made a picturesque English-style garden, the layout of which remains today -although not all of his panoply of buildings, alas. The heart of the garden, and its most beautiful part, is the rose garden designed in 1905 by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier. This is a feast for the rosarian, with scores of delectable old French shrub roses in beds and on swags, the whole given structure and height by clipped yew cones.

Bodnant, Wales

It was the 2nd Baron Aberconway who largely created this extraordinarily ambitious terraced garden between 1904 and 1914. The site of the garden could hardly be bettered, with views towards Snowdon, while the dramatic topography west of the house was also exploited to the full. Here Aberconway created spaces such as the Lily Terrace and the Canal Terrace. The latter features a delightful 18th-century building called Pin Mill (copied at another of our great gardens: Quatre Vents in Canada). Aberconway's grandfather, Henry Pochin, first laid out the estate from the 1870s. The Dell, in an atmospheric ravine south of the house, contains Pochin's plantings of conifers, complemented by Aberconway's Asiatic flowering shrubs - wonderful magnolias and camellias among them - many of which were the result of his sponsorship of the plant-hunting expeditions to China by George Forrest and Frank Kingdon-Ward. The garden today is one of the National Trust's finest horticultural treasures.

Courances, France

Is this the perfect example of the French formal garden? Created in the mid-17th century - reputedly by Jean, father of the great Andre Le Nôtre - the garden is filled with water in many moods, although it is serenity that sets the tone. In front of the château, to the south, is an elaborate box parterre that prefaces a perfect rectangular still pool, surrounded by lawns and trees. This vista continues along a broad grassy walk to a small circular pool with a statue of Hercules (symbolising strength and virtue) and on to a larger pool and amphitheatre. The woodland on each side of the main vista contains many more delights, with allées cutting through and pools, canals and cascades to discover. The other side of the house is dignified by a pair of long rectangular canals. The singularity of the conception is what appeals so much and lends this place its sublime beauty.

Crathes Castle, Scotland

The late Graham Stuart Thomas reckoned that in its heyday under the care of Lady Sybil Burnett, this garden was even better than Gertrude Jekyll's own Munstead Wood, which Thomas had visited in her lifetime. It was Lady Sybil's sureness of touch with colour that impressed, and the National Trust for Scotland has done a good job of retaining something of that sensibility in the garden today. Crathes was built for the Burnett family in the 16th century, but the gardens as seen today are a largely 20th-century creation, on a seven-acre site on two levels, bounded by old brick walls and fine old yew hedges. The turreted castle is a constant background presence. Colour-themed borders - yellow, orange, gold, white and silver - are very much in the mid-20th century style of gardens such as Hidcote (the Burnetts were friendly with Lawrence Johnston), and the whole composition works well as a complementary series of episodes.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Scotland

The architectural theorist Charles Jencks created this garden of turfed terraces and imaginative sculptural incident, having been inspired by the experiments in large-scale feng shui gardening (using a bulldozer) of his wife, the late Maggie Keswick, who also wrote a fine book on Chinese gardens. The centrepiece of Jencks's garden, and its stroke of genius, is the massive S-shaped fractal terrace with pools and associated spiral mound - a visually stunning and truly other-worldly conception that has inspired a contemporary vogue for turf terracing in landscape design in general. There are numerous other memorable moments, such as the Symmetry Break Terrace (symbolising a black hole) and the soliton-wave gates, which illustrate a principle of physical movement first discovered in the 19th century by a scientist who noticed that the tidal waves formed behind a canal boat continue even after the boat has stopped, as a physical "memory".

Levens Hall, England

There has been much debate about the actual date of the celebrated yew topiary forms at Levens Hall in Cumbria, which so captured the imaginations of Edwardian garden writers. Current thinking errs on the side of caution, dating much of it to the 19th century. On the other hand, there is no doubt that a formal garden was first laid out here in the early 18th century by James Grahme, a disaffected Tory squire who was going against the contemporary fashion for Whiggish landscape gardens replete with neo-classical buildings in a Virgilian pastoral setting. Wandering through this garden at twilight is one of the most evocative of all garden experiences; any description of the layout seems superfluous because the whole point is to become deliciously lost. Beds of perennials between the hedges, a nuttery and a herb garden top off this beguiling scene.

Hidcote, England

The story is well-known. The American Lawrence Johnston and his mother came to the Gloucestershire Cotswolds in 1907 and bought up an old manor house at a time when this was just becoming a fashionable thing to do. Lawrence developed a mania for gardening in general but - crucially - not for horticulture alone. He may have been plant-mad, even nurturing another garden (almost as important) on the French Riviera at Menton, but he also instinctively understood the importance of design in any garden that aspires to greatness. It is moves such as the pool garden at Hidcote, where the brimming pool takes up almost the entirety of its yew enclosure, and the twin pavilions prefaced by pleached hornbeams, which mark it out as something special. The simple layout, with two axes, has long been strengthened and shaped by the presence of large cedars near the house.

Isola Bella, Italy

A garden that looks like a ship is worthy of celebration indeed, and this extraordinary place - situated in the middle of Lake Maggiore and accessible only by boat - does not fail to live up to expectations. It was Count Carlo Borromeo's idiosyncratic vision in the 1630s which saw this villa and garden constructed over a period of 40 years. The island is oddly shaped and rises naturally at one end, which means that there is no apparent rhyme or reason to the "formal" design of terraces and parterres, which seem to multiply as one moves on. It is all dictated by topography. From a distance it is the tobelisks on the highest terraces that help lend such a ship-like air to the place, but when one is on the island the series of six connecting grottoes beneath the palace command the attention first, followed by the monumental stone "theatre" topped by a statue of a unicorn.

Giverny, France

Claude Monet's dreamy garden in Normandy is extremely well maintained; visitors can gain a sense of the symbiosis of his horticultural and artistic interests (with the former always subordinate to the latter). The main garden is set out on a grid with herbaceous plants - roses, delphiniums, nasturtiums, foxgloves - and vegetables allowed to grow and flower in super-abundance. Visitors must then pass beneath a railway line (it has always divided Monet's garden in two) via an incongruously bleak underpass, emerging into the water garden where the artist made his famous studies of waterlilies. The arching green bridge, dripping with wisteria, is a great cliche of garden design - a Mona Lisa moment - but, like Leonardo's painting, it is well worth seeing and very much holds its own amid the tyranny of expectation.

Little Sparta, Scotland

The poet and sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay created this world-renowned garden in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh over the course of 40 years. In many ways it is the summation of his work. Finlay died in 2006, but the garden is in the hands of a trust that now allows visitors on a much more regular basis than in Finlay's lifetime. Several hundred sculptures and inscriptions entertain, intrigue or disturb visitors as they follow a path through woodland and glades, past ponds and Finlay's own "temple" to Apollo (a customised farm building). The imagery oscillates between pastoral benevolence and militaristic malevolence - everything from submarines and hand grenades to classical deities and cosy comments on gardening appear here. The climactic view is across Lochan Eck towards hills and fields, with an inscription carved on massive stones before it: "The Present Order is the Disorder of the Future". This is a garden that is as literary as it is visual, and (to paraphrase Finlay himself) a place that is an attack just as much as it is a retreat.

Giardino Giusti, Italy

In On the Making of Gardens (1909) Sir George Sitwell of Renishaw Hall described the "intensely solemn loveliness" of this urban garden in Verona, which takes a hold of most people who visit it (Goethe and John Evelyn included). Tall, elegant cypresses at first seem to define it, but the garden's several levels are most affecting on the ground, with the flatness of the lowest accentuated by the smoothness of boxwood parterres punctuated by modest fountains and statues. The garden was originally laid out in the 1570s, with fountains, statues, grottoes and a labyrinth, all of which survive. Later additions include a late 18th-century parterre in the French style, a woodland area with grotto and decorative stone masks on the highest ground, together with a belvedere offering views of the city. The subtle organisation of these spaces chimes with a modern sensibility.

Het Loo, Netherlands

Very few grand 17th-century European Baroque gardens have made it into this selection. The reason? While they may be important - "great", even - they may not strike the visitor as excessively beautiful. The restored palace of Het Loo near Apeldoorn is an exception because of the (relatively) small-scale delight of its parterres, around what was conceived in the mid-1680s as a hunting lodge in a forest for William of Orange, who was about to become King William III of England. The pre-eminent parterre designer Daniel Marot assisted in the design of the parterres and the "King's" and "Queen's" gardens on opposite sides of the house (such gender divisions were often used in house interior layouts). The pleasures of tree-shaded canals are a particularly Dutch addition to this satisfying formal landscape, comprehensively restored in the 1980s in a pioneering project of its time.

Ninfa, Italy

After visiting this garden near Rome, many people list Ninfa as their favourite garden of all. It has an atmosphere all its own, perhaps because of the unique way it came into being. This has been a small town from Roman times, and an ancient layout of lanes and bridges still provides waymarking for visitors exploring the decorous dereliction all around. Owned by the Caetani family (as it still is), Ninfa was sacked in 1832 when the head of the family defied the Pope. It remained a ruin until the early 20th century, when the family (with English additions) returned, putting the sparkling river back into health and planting flowers, trees and shrubs. Even in its derelict years, Ninfa had been well known for its wildflowers. The town hall was converted into a house, overlooked by a fortified tower that still stands sentinel. There are carpets of cyclamens and other bulbous plants in spring, and later hydrangeas, roses, clematis and numerous tender or rare species. Latterly, it was Lelia and Hubert Howard who nurtured the garden and helped make it into what it is today.

Rousham, England

Treasured as much for the idiosyncratic, defiantly non-commercial way it is run (this private garden is still owned by the Cottrell-Dormers, who built it in the 18th century), Rousham, in Oxfordshire, has earned a special place in Britain's garden pantheon. Best known as a "William Kent garden" made in the 1730s, the basic design was, in fact, laid out by an under-sung master of the decade before, Charles Bridgeman. But Kent added panache to this clever episodic layout overlooking the River Cherwell. He even customised existing buildings beyond the boundaries of the estate in order to "call in the countryside", to use the contemporary phrase. Statues and statue groups, such as a copy of the Dying Gladiator and Scheemakers' Lion Attacking a Horse, set the elegaic atmosphere (Rousham's owner, General Dormer, had been badly wounded at the Battle of Blenheim). The walled garden by the house is extremely fine in terms of horticultural interest. Rousham is open every single day of the year but there is no ticket booth, no shop, no restaurant and (controversially) no children under 15 are allowed in.

Tarot Garden, Italy

The French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle created this extraordinary sculpture garden in Tuscany from 1978 until her death in 1998. Monumental figures, wittily realised in the artist's trademark bright colours, amorphous shapes and mosaic-work, many of which also serve as pavilions or small buildings, were based on tarot cards. The artist lived inside The Empress for a number of years. The interior has to be seen to be believed. The New Age subject matter and bright colours lead many to dismiss this garden, having seen photographs alone - but a visit is another matter. The integrity of the artist shines out and one can only wonder at the sustained obsessional energy required to make it. One interesting aspect of the garden is that the pieces have been deliberately placed close together - crammed in, almost -so that the whole space can be experienced in one sustained gulp.

Sissinghurst, England

The garden as it stands today (it is rather smart) may bear little resemblance to how it was in Vita Sackville-West's "ramshackle farm-tumble" time but Sissinghurst in Kent is gardened to an extremely exacting standard, satisfying most of its 200,000 annual visitors. The impossibly romantic setting - a ruined Elizabethan castle - is hard to beat, and world-famous set pieces such as the White Garden and the swags of climbing roses over the walls are lovingly maintained by a devoted team of gardeners. It is an overused word, but this really is a magical place. Vita's husband, Harold Nicolson, had a big say in the layout of the "garden rooms" which make up the whole, and is generally believed to have had a restraining influence on Vita. However, as Adam Nicolson revealed in Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (HarperPress, £20), Vita, in fact, had to tone down many of Harold's grandiose schemes.

Stourhead, England

For many this is the greatest set-piece triumph of the 18th-century English landscape movement, a garden of temples, grottoes and other mythical moments set around a mystical lake that acts as its beating heart. This landscape in Wiltshire was made at the behest of the banker Henry Hoare (Hoare's Bank trades in London to this day), perhaps as a symbolic journey through life, although much of the symbolism remains obscure or does not connect up in the expected way. That was probably a deliberate ploy on Hoare's part, for he needed (as a Tory) to remain socially and politically ambiguous in order to earn the fabulous amounts of money he made from his top-notch clients (mainly nepotistic or entrepreneurial Whigs). This garden is often compared, with justification, to the landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain, since there is a bridge, lake and classical temple in the distance: a memorably romantic vision of antiquity.

Mount Stewart, Northern Ireland

Making the most of its dramatic situation, the hilltop Temple of the Winds by James "Athenian" Stuart that overlooks Strangford Lough is all that survives of a great garden made here in the late 18th century for the 1st Marquess of Londonderry. This is only the most striking feature in what is otherwise an attractive and entertainingly idiosyncratic garden (the eclectic garden round the house features concrete statues of family political figures in the form of comical animals). In the 19th century it was suggested to the 3rd Marquess that he might like to turn the temple into a memorial for his son, the foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh. Lord Londonderry admirably defended the spirit of the building: "I have no taste for turning a temple built for mirth and jollity into a sepulchre - the place is solely appropriate for a junketing retreat in the grounds."

Powis Castle, Wales

This is a garden which inspires passionate devotion among a large segment of the garden cognoscenti; it draws people back again and again. Powis is an unusual fusion of a steeply terraced garden in the Italian Renaissance tradition, with 20th-century herbaceous planting of the highest quality. The terraces were created in the mid 17th century at a time when the house, which started life as a 13th-century seat of the Princes of Powis, was also being remodelled. What we see today is a remarkable composition of multiple terraces of lawns, topiary and themed borders, giving onto a massive lawn, then rising again into woodland, with views of the fields beyond that. It is quite a spectacle. Original 18th-century statuary has survived here where it has been lost to so many other gardens. The planting detail is much enjoyed and constantly changing: colour is certainly not eschewed and fuchsias are in abundance, together with pelargoniums, nasturtiums and a many more tender specimens.

Studley Royal, England

John Aislabie was the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 - the first big stockmarket scandal. He was vilified for his role in the debacle, sent to the Tower briefly and then exiled to his North Yorkshire estate where, after stewing for some time, set about improving his already emerging garden. The result is a stupendous landscape garden set in a steep-sided valley, with smooth lawns, still pools, serene temples and pure-white classical statuary in the valley bottom (an Elysian scene) and a wilder feel on the wooded valley sides, with temples hidden amid the trees. That is not all. The climax of the garden is a surprise view, seen from above, of the ruins of Fountains Abbey. To see this garden in the correct order, park at Studley Roger rather than at the National Trust's car park. If pushed, I'd have to say this is my favourite.

Vaux-le-Vicomte, France

This is the garden that so enraged Louis XIV that he had its owner imprisoned. Finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, whose days were probably numbered anyway, had also made the mistake of holding a series of grandiose fetes in the late 1650s to mark the completion of his château. The French King then hired the designer of this garden, Andre Le Nôtre, to make something bigger and better for himself - Versailles, which may be bigger than Vaux, but for most visitors is not better. At Vaux, Le Nôtre was able to engineer a downhill view from the house that's as satisfying as any in landscape design. Beyond a canal that cuts across this main vista, stands an elaborate grotto, and then the land rises again to a bronze statue of Hercules. This garden has been subject to several phases of restoration, little of which is accurate. But Le Nôtre's basic structure survives, and that is the most important element.

Villandry, France

Casual visitors to this Loire Valley chateau will not guess that its "quintessentially French" potager - albeit realised on an almost surrealistically massive scale - was created in the early 20th century by a Spanish-born doctor and his American wife, utilising what might be described as a relaxed attitude to authenticity. None of that matters. The garden is a visual, sensual triumph, with the vegetables in the nine squares of the formal potager garden chosen as much for their looks as their culinary value. This is the garden that made the ornamental cabbage into a cult in the 1990s. Decorative structures called berceaux (like large wooden pergolas) are sited at the corners of the potager, covered in roses, while beyond this focal space are formal parterre gardens containing clipped evergreen hedges, fountains and exuberant herbaceous plantings. This is a garden that is beautiful -and unashamedly good fun.

Villa Lante, Italy

For the majority of seasoned visitors, this garden just east of Viterbo is simply the most sublime Renaissance garden experience of all - a hillside water garden of the 1560s where the twin pavilions that act as "the house" are absorbed by and remain subordinate to the rhythms of the landscape design. And what rhythms these are - the water first emerges from the gnarly Grotto of the Deluge at the top of the garden, complemented by flanking Palladian loggias that act as small dining pavilions. This tension between smooth rationality and rough nature is continued throughout the design, with rationalism triumphing in the large, ordered fountain parterre at the foot of the garden. Perhaps the most memorable moment is the Fountain of the Table on the third level of four, which consists of a long stone table with a central runnel down its length. Cardinal Gambara, who commissioned the garden, made reference to his family name by using the crayfish motif - "gambara" means crayfish.

Worlitz, Germany

That Enlightenment progressive and garden-lover Prince Anhalt-Dessau created this 300-acre garden near Dessau in the late 18th century partly as a homage to the English landscape garden. Its inherent power and beauty win it plaudits from all visitors. All the buildings and much of the atmosphere of the place was directly inspired by a variety of English gardens, including Stourhead, but its true genius lies in the way the lakes, topography and woodland areas have been manipulated to create different moods and vistas. In fact, water covers a third of the available space. The prince's interest extended to new industry (there is a copy of Shropshire's Iron Bridge in the northern part of the park) and natural history - the most outlandish diversion here (sadly now gone) was a miniature copy of Mount Vesuvius which was designed to light up and spew out "lava".

Source By: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardenstovisit/3349870/The-worlds-50-most-beautiful-gardens-Part-one-Europe.html