Top 10 gardens around the world

Giardino Giusti, Verona, Italy Rome - Arabstoday Destinations in themselves, the best gardens are spaces where the grown and the made come together. They are unafraid to deal with life's big ideas, created by people who believe that gardens can and should be places of aesthetic and intellectual provocation and enrichment. Not everybody needs a lesson in history or botany and that's why there are no botanic gardens listed here, but very few people would argue against the benefits of a trip to the Guggenheim or Louvre, and that is what the gardens in this top 10 represent. 1. Skogskyrkogården (Woodland Cemetery), Stockholm, Sweden In 1994, when the United Nations World Heritage Committee decided to make the Skogskyrkogården a Unesco World Heritage site, it was only the second 20th-century cultural heritage site to be added to the list. It has been described as the most perfect modern landscapes on the planet, and as a place that attempts to make sense of our place in the universe, it is certainly one of the most profound. A landscape of hills and woodlands and sweeping meadows that is neither a modern landscape cemetery nor a city of the dead, the Skogskyrkogården is a peculiarly Nordic Elysium that represents both the beginning and the end of life and gardening, by subsuming the individual within the monumental, unthreatening simplicity of nature (www.skogskyrkogarden.se/en). 2. Las Pozas, Xilitla, Mexico Edward James was an Eton- and Oxford-educated multimillionaire, poet and patron of the arts who retreated into the Mexican jungle and made it his home. James went to Mexico in search of a site for a "surreal Eden" that would also serve as a home for his menagerie and orchid collection. By the time he arrived in Xilitla in 1947, James had already played patron to John Betjeman, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. While exploring the jungle, a companion of James's went swimming in a pool and, afterwards, as he lay drying in the sunshine, a cloud of blue butterflies descended and covered every inch of his body. James took this as a sign and immediately bought the surrounding 100 hectares, turning 20 of these into a garden that required 50 full-time gardeners just to keep the surrounding jungle at bay. In 1962, a rare jungle frost destroyed James's entire orchid collection, and from that point on, he worked with a local carpenter on the extraordinary surreal concrete structures that dominate the gardens today (www.xilitla.org). 3, Painshill Park, Surrey, England Many historic gardens and landscapes feel like just that - history lessons that are easier to appreciate than to love - but Painshill Park still manages to surprise, charm, educate and inspire after more than 240 years. Created by the Hon Charles Hamilton MP, the 14th child and youngest son of the Earl of Abercorn, Painshill was influenced by the paintings of Poussin and Salvator Rosa, and the Italian landscapes Hamilton had seen while on the Grand Tour. Determined to create a garden that would be fashionable, beautiful and fun, Hamilton embarked on a hugely ambitious garden makeover, using the limited funds from his inheritance, and succeeded in creating one of the most romantic and theatrical of all English 18th-century gardens. Now restored, Painshill includes a great serpentine lake and architectural follies such as a grotto, Gothic temple, Chinese bridge and a hermitage, while eye catchers, carefully framed views and a circular walk continue to weave their magic (www.painshill.co.uk).