Famous gardens in Europe to visit

Europe’s most famous gardens show the history of garden art in order: the terraces and fountains of the Renaissance in Italy, such as the Villa d’Este and the Boboli Gardens, the axes of the Baroque at Versailles, Schönbrunn and Drottningholm, the English landscape park at Stowe and Stourhead, and the gardens of the 19th and 20th centuries made by painters and plant lovers, such as Monet’s Giverny and Sissinghurst. Many of them belong to palaces that are also famous buildings.

Facts

Islamic and Italian gardens

The Generalife above the Alhambra in Granada was the summer garden of the Nasrid kings from the 14th century. It is based on running water in a channel through an enclosed courtyard, with fountains and tall cypresses, and is one of the best-preserved examples of Islamic garden art in Europe.

In Italy the garden became architecture. The Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti in Florence were laid out from 1550 with an amphitheatre, a grotto and fountains. At Tivoli, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este had the Villa d’Este laid out from 1560 with hundreds of fountains and a water organ, and at Bagnaia the water of the Villa Lante runs from a spring in the woods down through the whole garden. The botanical garden in Padua of 1545 is the world’s oldest university garden on its original site.

The gardens of the Baroque

André Le Nôtre began work at Versailles in 1661 on the commission of Louis XIV. The axes draw the eye to the horizon, the parterres lie in patterns and the water stands still in reflecting basins. Versailles became the model for palace gardens throughout Europe: Het Loo in the Netherlands, Herrenhausen in Hanover with a fountain that rises more than 70 metres, Schönbrunn in Vienna and Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland, where the fountains are driven by the water’s own pressure.

In Sweden the Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora had Nicodemus Tessin the Younger design the Baroque garden at Drottningholm, with a clear axis from the palace. The palace setting has been a World Heritage Site since 1991. At Hampton Court outside London there is the maze from around 1700, the oldest surviving hedge maze in Britain.

The English landscape park

In the 18th century English landowners turned away from the straight lines of the Baroque. At Stowe William Kent designed the Elysian Fields with temples, and Lancelot “Capability” Brown was head gardener there before he became the country’s most sought-after landscape architect. Rousham retains much of Kent’s garden, and at Stourhead the walk goes round a lake with temples and a grotto, conceived as a story from Virgil’s Aeneid.

The style spread as the English park. In Sweden Fredrik Magnus Piper designed Hagaparken for Gustav III, with a pavilion, a copper tent and winding paths. Schwetzingen in Germany shows the Baroque garden and the landscape park side by side. The difference between the styles is explained in the guide to the Baroque garden and the landscape park.

Gardens of science and of the city

In 1745 Carl von Linné had the university garden at Uppsala remodelled, and in the Linnaeus Garden the plants were arranged according to his system of classification. The garden fell into decay in the 19th century but was recreated in the early 20th century from Linnaeus’s own plans.

In the 19th century gardens were built for everyone. Birkenhead Park of 1847 was the first public park in Britain paid for with public money, and the Palm House at Kew of 1848 was one of the first large glasshouses of iron and glass.

The gardens of painters and plant lovers

Claude Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and ten years later dug a pond that he filled with water lilies. In his last decades he painted the pond over and over again. The garden was restored in the 1970s and 80s and is open to visitors from spring to autumn.

Gertrude Jekyll planted the borders in her own garden Munstead Wood by colour, like a painter, and her books influenced gardens throughout the English-speaking world. At Sissinghurst Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson made, from 1930, a garden divided into rooms, where the white garden has been copied all over the world.

What to look for

When you visit a garden, first look at where the axes and views lead. Straight axes and symmetry mean Renaissance or Baroque, winding paths and views like paintings mean a landscape park, and rooms with hedges and colourful borders mean a 20th-century garden. Many gardens have layers from several periods, like Drottningholm, where parts were remade as an English park in the 18th century.

More gardens, including in Japan and China, and the garden’s tools from the lawn mower to the allotment, can be found in the garden category.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A garden has a lake with temples on its shores, winding paths and views that look like paintings. Which style is it?