A curated list of the world’s most beautiful gardens

A rose is a rose is a rose. Or is it? Hikari Yokoyama, the founder of the London-based floral studio Naum Flower, thinks deeply about the flowers she so artfully arranges. Her approach goes beyond the blooms and the stems, right down to the root of things—and even to the soil itself. “Everyone loves flowers, but they don’t realise that they are often grown in dirt—not soil—that is drenched in pesticides and herbicides,” Yokoyama says. With Naum, she aims to make the entire floral process, from the environment the blooms are grown in to the labour practices used to harvest them, ethical and beautiful.

Yokoyama is a relative newcomer to the world of flowers. The Japan-born, Chicago-bred designer spent years in the tech, luxury, and art worlds (she is married to White Cube gallery founder Jay Jopling) before the pandemic forced a reassessment. “I felt like I had wandered down the wrong rabbit hole,” she says.

During Covid, the couple lived in Yorkshire with their newborn, surrounded by farmland. “That was when I really started to feel heavy about the climate crisis and biodiversity loss,” Yokoyama says. She had an urge to “find a patch of land that I could protect.” In 2021, she took over 1.5 acres in Oxfordshire, found a gardener, and started planting a rainbow of blossoms, from tulips to hydrangeas to sweet peas. Shortly afterwards, she launched Naum Flower and the design studio Naum House, which prioritised community and a connection to nature.

“I think we need gardens that encourage plurality, diversity, and abundance—gardens that are spaces of contemplation, of discovery and possibility.”

Historically, Yokoyama explains, gardens have been extractive and reflective of “a human desire to control, exploit, and collect.” Here, she singles out gardens across the world that function differently. “These gardens represent the visionary possibilities for a world where humans can live harmoniously alongside nature,” she says. Yokoyama’s favourites include an organic teaching farm in Auroville, India, a rewilded Victorian garden in Sussex, England, and a park in southeastern Brazil where art and nature are designed to converge in dialogue with each other.

Buddha Garden in Auroville, India, is a welcoming (and affordable) spiritual community where you can stay a few weeks and learn the basics of organic growing. Anyone can come and volunteer here. When I spent time here in my 20s, I found myself happily crouching in the red earth, with drip irrigation snaking around me, breathing the fragrant smell of peppery arugula. Broken English and hand gestures were the way to communicate, as the volunteers came from all over the world. Once totally depleted from chemical intervention, the soil in Buddha Garden has been painstakingly restored over the decades and is now fruitful. If you want to stay in a guest house near the campus, book well in advance!

Salmon Creek Farm is a 1970s commune surrounded by redwoods in Northern California that has been transformed into an artist collective, creative retreat, and school by architect and artist Fritz Haeg.

Hacienda de San Antonio in Colima, Mexico, is a remote coffee plantation in the foothills of the Colima volcano that has been turned into an organic ranch and retreat. (Its sister resort is the renowned Cuixmala). The property is aligned with a river that takes water from the uplands to the lowlands through this lush agricultural landscape. The formal gardens around the house feature a geometric network of small waterways that follow the natural fall of the land, making you aware of the topography. When you walk through the property, you feel the power of water and understand that this place is blessed with an abundance of it. Staying here is like getting to stay in one of the most beautiful homes in the world, plus the service is impeccable.

Inhotim, a 345-acre art park in southeastern Brazil that showcases around 700 artworks, is an interesting project where art is in dialogue with gardening and nature. Artists who are asked to collaborate here are each given a standalone pavilion in the park in which they can install their work, and they also have the opportunity to design the surrounding gardens and approaching path. Adriana Varejão’s gallery, which was designed by Rodrigo Cerviño Lopez, feels the most complete and surreal because she spent the most time there during the park’s development (she was married to the founder, Bernardo Paz) and had a deep connection to the place. A resort, the Clara Arte, recently opened in the park.

Knepp in Sussex, England, features a rewilded Victorian walled garden and a regeneratively farmed market garden located on a centuries-old 3,500-acre family estate inherited by conservationist Charlie Burrell in the 1980s. After initially updating all the farm technology, equipment, and systems, Burrell and his wife, Isabella Tree, couldn’t turn a profit, so they pivoted to a new method of land management that focused on one goal: restoring nature. The gardens there now are buzzing with life. You can stay on the property in a simple but charming tent or tree house and eat at the Wilding Kitchen, which serves produce grown in the market garden

I know about the Tokachi Millennium Forest in Hokkaido, Japan, because 20 years ago, my friend and now collaborator, the landscape designer Dan Pearson, was asked to create a garden there. I am fascinated by the concept of satoyama, a millennia-old, indigenous way of coexisting with and working with nature in rural areas, which is especially difficult in a place where the growing season is very short, sandwiched between periods of intense cold and heavy snow. While here, Pearson recommends staying at Seijyakubow at the Tokachigawa onsen, which is about a 45-minute drive away.

Lead Image: Davis Gerber 

This article originally appeared on Harper'sBazaar.com

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