The year has just begun and you don’t have any trips planned yet? Nothing that can’t be solved in a jiffy. If you like flowers, plants, and trees, there are destinations that must be on your list for 2026.
Lonely Planet, a leading travel media company, world-famous for publishing its travel guides, has revealed some of the botanical gardens you must visit once in your lifetime. They are the perfect places to see iconic species that you would never be able to observe otherwise.
Check out the list of the world’s most impressive botanical gardens that must be on your travel list for this year:
Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, Brazil
It is known for its lush tropical paradise and the Avenue of Imperial Palms, planted when the garden was inaugurated in 1808. Other highlights include the Amazon section, the lagoon, and the orchid house, with 600 species of orchids.
Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, Cape Town, South Africa
It is a green haven. It was one of the first botanical gardens in the world to focus on the protection of native plants and today is home to over 7,000 species, all native to South Africa.
Royal Botanical Garden, Madrid, Spain
The Botanical Garden is next to the Prado Museum and is a must-see. It brings together plants from the Americas and the Pacific, as well as an excellent selection of European plants, arranged on three terraced levels.
José Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden, Bogotá, Colombia
Colombia’s largest botanical garden is not only a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the capital, but also a tour of the country’s plants, trees, and medicinal herbs. It brings together an extraordinary variety of plants, from pines, palms, and banana trees to around 4,000 species of orchids.
Huntington Botanical Garden, Los Angeles
Strolling through these gardens is like traveling through the microclimates of the world, from a date palm from the Canary Islands to the newest Chinese Garden, the largest outside of China, whose pavilions are connected by graceful bridges.
Arctic-Alpine Botanical Garden in Tromsø, Norway
This oasis, 350 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, is located at a latitude that is impossible for most plants. It is 1,149 kilometers north of Oslo and is covered with snow for most of the year.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom
Founded in 1840 during the Victorian era, when the British Empire ruled the world, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a true green paradise boasting an extensive collection of plants from around the world. A whole day can be spent exploring this 132-hectare wonder.
La Orotava Garden, Tenerife, Spain
This is one of the best places on the island of Tenerife for a nature walk, surrounded by countless tropical species from all over the world.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Tasmania, Australia
These gardens began as a vegetable garden to provide food for the small community of convicts who made up the island’s population, although they soon took on their current role in 1818.
Eden Project, United Kingdom
It looks like a vast tropical garden with greenhouses, but the Eden Project is much more than that: it is a center that seeks to explain the relationships and dependencies between plants and people.
Source: Notícias ao Minuto
