Discover these famous and fashionable gardens around the world and their celebrated landscape architects, from painters to fashion designers to gay icons.

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Benton End Gardens, Suffolk, England

This garden, created by the landscape painter/plantsman Sir Cedric Morris, recently underwent a major restoration by the head gardener of London’s Garden Museum. Considered the greatest British colourist of all time, Morris collected rare and colourful bulbs from North Africa and the Mediterranean during his painting expeditions. He is also famous for cultivating bearded Iris, of which he named 90 cultivars. In the 1930s Morris and his fellow artist and life partner Arthur Lett-Haines founded a bohemian painting school here (attended by a young Lucien Freud) that was considered a safe haven for gay artists. Renowned society florist Constance Spry was a frequent visitor to Benton End. The restored garden is expected to re-open in the coming months. 

Garden at the Hauser and Wirth Gallery, Illa del Rei, Menorca, Spain

To arrive at the gallery, an outpost of the London location, one must book a free ticket on a bright yellow catamaran that takes you 20 minutes out from the harbour of Menorca’s capital, Mahon, to a tiny island that once housed a military hospital. Typical of this most wildly beautiful of Spain’s Balearic Islands, the gallery’s garden, designed by revered Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf (known as the leader of the New Perennial movement in garden design), features native grasses and plants and a sculpture trail. Also notable is the medicinal garden (a reference to the old hospital) whose scent hits you as you approach. Don’t miss lunch in the olive grove at the excellent restaurant, Cantina.

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Tuileries Garden, Paris, France

Louis Benech, the long-time companion of shoe designer Christian Louboutin, is considered the top landscape architect in France, whose work has been commissioned by wealthy entities and individuals all over the world, including the house of Hermès and Diane Von Furstenberg. In 1990, Benech and his partners won the commission to restore the historic Tuileries (originally created by Catherine de’ Medici), the famous garden on the site of a former tile factory that serviced the royal residence that is now the Louvre. Over the next decade, they planted more than 3,000 trees there. Famous for its fountains, statues and distinctive green metal chairs, the Tuileries is a beloved meeting place for both tourists and Parisians. Visitors in recent years will notice that parts of the formal French garden have been rewilded with logs and ferns and pine trees – no doubt part of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s “greening” of Paris initiative in the lead-up to the Olympics.

Jardin Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco

This most fashionable of gardens was originally designed and built by French orientalist painter Jacques Majorelle over a period of 40 years. The gardens and 1930s Cubist villa (designed by French architect Paul Sinoir) were bought and restored by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his business partner Pierre Bergé in 1980 to save them from redevelopment as a hotel. The pair added 160 plant species with the help of a team of 20 gardeners. Filled with cacti and fountains that, along with the walls, are painted in what is known as “Majorelle Blue,” the rustic garden is tucked away on an unassuming street in Marrakech. When Saint Laurent died in 2008, his ashes were spread in the Rose Garden here, and the street was renamed Rue Yves Saint Laurent. 

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The Garden at Château Fontainebleau, France

Just 40 minutes from Paris, the Château Fontainebleau, located in a large forested hunting ground, is a royal castle less well-known than Versailles and with fewer crowds, but its gardens are designed by the same landscape architect, the great André le Notre. Featuring a formal Grand Parterre, an English Garden, a Carp Lake with rowboats and the Garden of Diana with a large sculpture of the Goddess, it’s entirely walkable in a few hours, with a stop at one of the kiosks along the way for a restorative crêpe. Touring the Château itself (the favourite residence of Napoleon Bonaparte) is also delightful, most notably for the collection of artwork.