Cultivate on the Cote d'Azur
A love of gardening could bag you a free holiday. Working holiday website Workaway has a rent-free holiday on the Cote D'Azur in France. The deal is posted by a British couple who offer seven nights' accommodation in their house, in a medieval village near St Tropez, in exchange for 20 hours gardening work a week, for minimum stays of three weeks.
The offer is open to couples or two people sharing, staying in self-contained accommodation, starting in May. Tasks include weeding, clearing, digging flowerbeds, pruning, watering plants and shredding garden waste for compost. The site offers feedback from previous workawayers.
See workaway.info.
See gardens at sea
Have one foot at sea and the other planted firmly on terra firma with a gardening cruise offered by the UK's Royal Horticultural Society.
They include Spring in Scandinavia, a 12-day garden adventure setting sail from Portsmouth on Swan Hellenic's boat Minerva which will ferry you to the gardens of the Frederiksborg Palace in Copenhagen, the botanical gardens of Gothenburg, along the magnificent Hardangerfjord in Norway to Ulvik, the country's stunning apple HQ, and on to the Milde botanical gardens in Bergen. Accompanying you is Rosie Atkins, founder of Gardens Illustrated magazine. It departs 28th April and costs from £1,825 (€2,200) each.
See rhs.org.uk.
Dig deep in Tuscany
Part of the appeal of going on a guided gardening holiday is being in the company of like-minded people. Guided tour specialist Travel Department has gardening holidays across Europe, many led by celebrity gardener Dermot O'Neill. These include a chance to get behind the walls of Tuscany's villas to explore some glorious gardens.
Visit some of the region's finest, including the 17th century one at Parco Villa Reale, with its open air theatre, spectacular fountains and waterfall. See also the baroque garden at Villa Pfanner in medieval Lucca, with its lawns, ornamental flowers, forest plants and terracotta pots of lemon trees. Finish at Villa Garzoni, whose historic gardens are a work of art. The five night break costs €879 including flights.
See traveldepartment.ie.
Peony power in China
If peonies have a place in your heart, and your garden, go and see these floral showstoppers in full bloom at the Luoyang Peony Festival, in late April. With dazzling displays not just from the flora but from the various folk performances staged amid them, the entire city goes peony mad at this time of year, including the National Peony Garden which has more than a million peony trees and 1,200 different kinds, all big and blowsy and just waiting to be admired, including the three metre high Peony King tree. Take a China Peony Festival Tour from April 10th-23rd 2015, from $4,175 (€3,035).
See gardeningtours.com.
Tulips in Holland
Keukenhof is known as the Garden of Europe. Situated near Lisse in the Netherlands, it's also the world's largest flower garden with approximately seven million bulbs planted across 32 hectares. Open annually from now until mid-May, get there by mid-April to see it at its florid best. The theme of this year's display is Holland, so it's even more about tulips than usual, with a magnificent flower mosaic of 60,000 tulips depicting the canals of Amsterdam. Don't miss the Tulipomania exhibition, with the story of bulbs worth their weight in gold, and details of all the famous people who gave their name to new varieties. There's a cookery garden, a love garden, a bee happy garden and a Dutch cow garden which, like a Friesian, is black and white.
See keukenhof.nl.
Pretty as a picture at Giverny
Size isn't everything in gardens. For inspirational beauty, Monet's Garden in Giverny is a must-see. Step through the picture frame into a garden of two parts – a flower garden called Clos Normand to the front of the house and a Japanese-inspired water garden next door. The former, just one hectare, is divided into beds with plants of different heights starting with fruit and ornamental trees, climbing roses, hollyhocks and banks of annuals, with common or garden flora such as daisies and poppies rubbing shoulders with exotic beauties. What would elsewhere be the "driveway" of the house is covered by iron arches with climbing roses and a carpet of nasturtiums. The artist liked neither organisation nor constraint, planted according to colour and left nature to do the rest. The water garden, reached by an underground passage, was inspired by Japanese prints. As well as the bridge, covered with wisteria, there are weeping willows and bamboo and those famous water lilies, which bloom all summer.
Open from April 1st to November 1st. See giverny.org.
Seed saving in Cape Town
With its stunning setting on the eastern slopes of Cape Town's Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden was established in 1913 as one of the first botanic gardens in the world devoted to a country's indigenous flora. More than 7,000 species are cultivated here, including many rare ones whose future outside of its boundaries is under threat. The 36 hectare garden is part of a 528 hectare estate and nature reserve in the heart of the Cape Floristic Region – a Unesco world heritage site. If you can, stay in the thick of it all at Kirstenbosch Manor Guesthouse, with some of the best views in Cape Town. A garden cottage costs 900 rand (€62) per night during high season, October to April.
See sanbi.org/gardens/kirstenbosch.
A Robinsonian garden
If you're apt to choose a hotel because of its garden, don't miss 16th century Gravetye Manor in Sussex, one-time home of reknowned gardener William Robinson.
He bought it, and 1,000 acres, in 1884 and lived here until he died in the 1930s, putting his pioneering ideas for the creation of the natural garden into practice in a style often copied but rarely matched. Having worked his way around the formal gardens of England and France, he took a very different tack in his own backyard and, even when aged and infirm, he would go out in his bath-chair and scatter bulbs and seeds from a bag on his lap, which pretty much sums up his approach.
Now a posh hotel, you can stay and enjoy them for yourself, from £145 pps per night.
See gravetyemanor.co.uk.
Forage in Finland
Learn to view the great outdoors as your store cupboard with a foraging course in a Finnish forest from Feel the Nature. Taking place in Nuuksio National Park, a treasure trove of berries and mushrooms, locals believe the good stuff tastes even better here thanks to the region's long summer days and white nights. Berry season begins in mid-July when the blueberries ripen, and you can take a guided hike to all the best picking spots, including transfers from Helsinki and a forest meal, from €60 each. See feelthenature.fi.
Design a French garden break
La Maison d'Orsan, a former monastery dating from 1107, set in an idyllic location in the Berry region of France, has gardens inspired by medieval tapestries. Today a seven-bedroom boutique hotel, it's owned by two architects with expertise in landscaping and garden architecture. So alongside a room with views out over its stunning 15 hectares of blooms, you can book a garden design consultation with them about how to whip your own back yard into shape too – for €1,300 a day including accommodation. Open from March 29th to November 2nd. See prieuredorsan.com.
