Gardens in all their glory
Peter the Great's Summer Palace near St Petersburg. Picture: Margaret Turton
Gardens and plants have long held a deep fascination for people. Many were developed as flamboyant backdrops for rulers around the world; others were created for quiet repose.
Some evolved into important centres of scientific research. These are a few of the best, and most unusual.
THE GARDENS AT THE CZAR'S SUMMER PALACE NEAR PETERSBURG
After Peter the Great of Russia visited the Palace of Versailles, his mind filled with wonderful new ideas. Not to be outdone by his French counterparts, Peter planned a dazzling backdrop of his own.
A Summer Palace near St Petersburg would be graced with fountains and gravity-fed cascades conveying water through parklands for 20km, all without the use of pumps. By any measure, this was an amazing feat for its time.
Tsar Peter's fountain system has hardly changed since the 1720s.
The spectacle begins on a glittering terrace in front of the Summer Palace, where water is collected from a natural source and directed down to a Grand Cascade comprised of three waterfalls and 64 fountains embellished with golden statues. Now, though, the biggest fountain operates at 50 per cent capacity as it tends to drench tourists on windy days.
YUYUAN GARDENS, SHANGHAI
Many people have wandered through the zigzagging pathways and delicate pavilions of Shanghai's Yuyuan Gardens since they were first laid out by a wealthy Ming Dynasty official in 1559.
Over the centuries they were damaged and renovated several times but major work undertaken in the 1950s returned Yuyuan Gardens to their former splendour.
And so, in a city of soaring skyscrapers, it's still possible to find a quiet, secluded spot among carp-filled ponds or at a latticed window overlooking a display of flowering plants and ancient trees.
Rock gardens are also an important feature of Yuyuan. The Grand Rockery, with its grottoes, caves and a 14m-high man-made "mountain", was once the highest spot in Old Shanghai.
DRY LANDSCAPE GARDENS IN KYOTO
Miniaturised scenes from nature have long been a feature of Japanese landscape design.
A carefully selected stone might form a mountain or an island. Fine white gravel may be styled into a stream or finely raked into a patterned field. Ginkaku-ji, a Zen temple and garden complex near the northern end of the Philosophers Path in Kyoto, features a stylised Mt Fuji formed from sand surrounded by a sculptured sandy sea.
Fifteen carefully chosen stones set within an empty field of raked gravel represent mountains and islands at Ryoan-ji, yet another Zen garden in Kyoto where today's visitors can still immerse themselves in an austere tranquillity and contemplate the lives of Zen monks.
Modern landscape design continues to draw upon Zen philosophy, as in the gardens of Tofuku-ji temple where landscape architect Shigemori Mirei created his Dry Garden of erect stones positioned within a patchwork-patterned field.
BAROQUE GARDENS IN HANNOVER
One of Germany's earliest and best baroque-style gardens can be seen at Herrenhausen, the former summer residence of the Royal House of Hannover.
The splendours of court life are still evident in the Grosser Garten, where fountain displays and neo-classical statues are set against a neatly ordered backdrop of clipped hedges and regimented flower beds.
Also at Herrenhausen, the Georgengarten presents an idealised park landscape in the English style, traversed by a long avenue of trees.
And the Berggarten, once the Royals' kitchen garden, has evolved into an excellent botanical display garden with 11,000 species of plants from around the world.
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW
London's Kew Gardens are noted for their association with the British Royal family.
Princess Augusta, mother of George III, established a botanic garden and hot house in 1759 and, 250 years later, Kew holds the biggest collection of plants on earth - more than 30,000 different plants plus seven million dried plant specimens in the herbarium.
Sir Joseph Banks was Kew's first director, and plants he collected on his sea voyage to Australia found a home at Kew.
So, too, some new discoveries including the fire-resistant Eucalyptus sweedmaniana recently collected in WA by Luke Sweedman and a former colleague from Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Perth, namely Professor Stephen Hopper, who is the current director at Kew Gardens.
CARL LINNAEUS'S BOTANICAL PLAYGROUND IN SWEDEN
When Carl Linnaeus visited Oland in 1741 he was absolutely fascinated by what he saw. The Swede who devised the Linnaean System, the scientific method of classifying plants, examined this island off the coast of Sweden from the perspective of a celebrated botanist.
Unlike any landscape he had previously observed, Oland's long, treeless sandstone plain supported a range of plants that survived the Ice Age and post-glacial warming period.
These days, the Stora Alvaret, Oland's 40km-long southern plain, is World Heritage-listed.
In particular, it is renowned for the orchids and rock-roses that bloom during May and June.
The island is also famous as the summer retreat of the Swedish royal family, whose residence, Solliden Palace, is on Oland.
Margaret Turton was a guest of Bentours, Helen Wong's Tours, JNTO, German National Tourist Office, VisitBritain and the Scandinavian Tourist Board.
