~ Top 10 Most Beautiful Botanic Gardens ~

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Top 10 Most Beautiful Botanic Gardens


1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England
 


The Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, or Kew Gardens for short, is simply the worlds largest collection of living plants. Over a respectable area, to put it mildly, of 120 hectares there are 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium contains more than seven million (7,000,000!) preserved plant specimens. It also has a library of more than 750,000 volumes and an illustration collection of more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. Taking care of this entire place are over 650 scientists and other staff. Although the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden in 1840, collections of plants were accruing there since the middle of 18th century. Appropriate for an organization of such scope, Kew Gardens serve not only as green venue, but is also an important seed-bank, valuable library and archive, forensic advisory, economy guidelines, and it features the advanced Jodrell laboratory for botanical research. Yet again, if are there just for the walk, there are plenty of themed structures around, including the Great Pagoda, built 1762.

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2. Montreal Botanical Garden, Canada
 


Slightly smaller than Kew Gardens, the Montreal Botanical Garden still extends over impressive 75 hectares. It was founded in 1931, against the tide of the Great Depression. At this time Quebec had no horticultural school, so in order to train its own gardeners, the Garden founded the Ecole dapprentissage horticole at the initiative of its designer, Henry Teuscher, along with an Institute for Biological Research. This quickly gained strength and three years later there were as many as 200 budding gardeners - an educational practice that still grows today. Among the other interesting sites is the Shade Garden, now possibly the only place that has preserved the majestic American elm from the Dutch elm disease in about 1940, and the arboretum (literary "a place with trees"), which, in a process reverse to common occurrence, is situated what during  the 1940s and 50s was effectively a dump.

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3. Botanical Garden in Berlin, Germany
 


The Botanical Garden in Berlin has an area of 43 hectares and contains around 22,000 different plant species. Its most well-known part is the largest glass-house in the world, the Great Pavilion, built in 1906 from steel and covered in glass (25 m high and 30 by 60 m of floor area). It has numerous amazing plant collections, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is its history. It was first recognized way back in 1573, even before the term "Botanic Garden" had existed. Since then a process of continuous growth issued, until in 1943 the building of a bunker in about 10 m depth in the garden was started. This was, needless be said, an unusual place for a bunker and it led to destruction of several gardens by air strikes, artillery fire and fighting on the ground in 1945. Now the entrances to the bunker are blown up, but the rest of the construction graciously serves as winter quarters for bats.

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4. Kyoto Botanical Garden, Japan
 


If you are into Japanese gardens, then the best place to go, surely, would be Japan. And the best botanical garden in Japan by some distance is Kyoto Botanical Garden. It was first established in 1924, fell into disuse in 1946, and was restarted in 1961. Now it contains 12,000 species, arranged in the Bamboo Garden, Bonsai Exhibit, Camellia Garden, Cherry Trees, Flower Bed, Japanese Iris Garden, Japanese Native Plants, Lotus Pond, Nakaragi-no-mori Pond, Peony Garden and many more. It even has a conservatory complex shaped to resemble the nearby Kinkaku-ji Temple and Kyotos northern mountains. In it you can find the Ananas Room, the Desert and Savannah Plants Room and the Jungle Zone, but you didnt come all the way to Japan to look at ananases, now, did you?

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5. Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, South Africa



The Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden may not be the oldest (work on it started in 1913), nor is it the largest (now covering 36 hectares in a 528 hectare reserve). Its significance lies in the ideology behind it, because it is the first botanical garden in the world that was founded in order to preserve the countrys unique flora. It is now famous for the fact that with minor exceptions only indigenous and specifically endemic (unique to a defined geographical location) are cultivated. And the reason behind its existence is the Cambridge botanist Henry Harold Pearson, who commenced work on it without pay and in trying conditions. He lived in the gardens, which were then overgrown, populated by wild pigs, overrun with weeds and planted with orchards. He further funded the task by selling firewood and acorns. Finally, after three years of hard work, Pearson died in 1916 from pneumonia. Buried in his beloved garden, his epitaph is still there today: "If you seek his monument, look around".

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6. Brooklyn Botanic Garden, USA



In case you love Japanese gardens, live in the United States and cannot make it to Japan, do not fret - the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York has a Japanese Hill-and-Pond garden that is considered by numerous landscape architects the masterpiece of its creator, Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota. Constructed in 1914, it is also the first Japanese garden in an American public garden. And as if that is not enough, the Garden also features more than 200 cherry trees of 42 Asian species, which amounts to it being the outstanding site for cherry blossoming outside Japan. The different species bloom at slightly different times and the sequence could be tracked online at Cherry Watch, on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden website. Needless to say, on its 21 hectares of space, the BBG displays a wide variety of other gardens, among which are the Shakespeare Garden, the Celebrity Path, honouring famous Brooklynites such as Woody Allen and Walt Whitman, and the Alice Recknagel Ireys Fragrance Garden, designed for the visually impaired.

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7. Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore



Another of the large gardens, Singapore Botanic Gardens is spread on a 74-hectare area. First established in 1822 as a "Botanical and Experimental Garden", its main role was to evaluate crops for cultivation of potential economic importance. Throughout the years it has served its purpose accordingly - it is responsible for rubber cultivation and orchid hybridisation, to name just two. Its importance was such that during the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II, authoritative Japanese professors made sure that no looting would occur in the Gardens and the Museum and both institutions continued to function as scientific institutions. Today, its flagship is the National Orchid Garden with its more than 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids of orchids, within numerous gardens and one of the best orchidariums in the world.

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8. Belfast Botanic Gardens, Northern Ireland
 


Before Kew Gardens and the Irish National Botanic Garden, there was one place to go if you wanted to see a Richard Turner cast iron glasshouse, and it was the Belfast Botanic Gardens. Founded in 1828, the Gardens relatively modest 11 hectares are open to Belfast citizens as a public park since 1895. However, if you are in a hurry to see the 11-metre tall Globe Spear Lily blooming, you are a bit too late - it finally blossomed in 2005 after 23 years of waiting, and sadly, that type of lilies die after flowering. On the other hand, a plant that doesnt seem to be going anywhere is the slow-growing 400 year old Xanthorrhoea. While you are there, ask the venerable plant if it approves of those youths making noise at Tennents Vital music festival, also at the Gardens. The headliners throughout the years have included such rascals as Primal Scream, Fatboy Slim, Death in Vegas, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon, Faithless, and The Raconteurs.

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9. Jardin des Plantes, France
 


Jardin des Plantes, the main botanical garden in France, is located on 28 hectares at the centre of Paris. Founded in 1626, opened to the public in 1640 and having a small zoo since 1795, there are a lot of interesting sites to see. It has a beautiful Art Deco winter garden, a huge Rose Garden, an impressive Alpine garden and a Labyrinth. It most unique, however, in creating a collection of trees notable not for their beauty, rarity or size, but for their history. Besides the paths in the Jardin des Plantes tower many trees that were brought to France or Europe by travelling naturalists for the first time, including the 366 years old Robins black locust tree from the eastern United States. Some of these trees mark the success of many attempts of preservation and scientific advances, such as one of two cedars brought from Lebanon in the hat of Bernard de Jussieu in 1734, because he had broken their pot, or the pistachio tree which gave evidence for Sebastien Vaillant to confirm plant sexuality in 1718.

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10. Royal Botanical Garden of Sydney, Australia



The Royal Botanical Garden of Sydney is the largest and oldest botanical garden in Australia. The garden itself is spread over 30 hectares, but it is surrounded by the Domain, a public park of an area of 34 hectares. The Domain has been the Governors Demesne since, but the official foundation date of the garden is considered to be 1816, when it was opened to 'the respectable class of people. Among its significant nearly 9 000 species there are many interesting specimens neatly distributed in thematic gardens, but in recent years the Royal Botanical Garden has attracted attention not with its plants, but something rather more peculiar. A large colony of Grey-headed Flying Foxes (type of fruitbat) has settled there and is threatening to destroy many of the heralded trees. In an attempt to disrupt the sleep of the bats and force them to relocate, the management will be playing recorded sounds of chainsaws and tractors in the spring of 2012.