The world's prettiest flower gardens

Within this research, we’ve delved into the allure of the world’s most enchanting gardens, utilising TikTok, Instagram, Tripadvisor, and Google search data to discover which famous gardens should be at the top of every traveller’s bucket list.

While planning to visit some of the world’s most beautiful gardens, you may decide to book some of the best holidays and tours to make the most of your trip. Some of the most stunning natural gardens, including the Boboli Gardens of Florence, can be found in Europe. Alternatively, if you’re planning a more exotic break, you could experience the fantastic Kenroku-en Gardens in Kanazawa, Japan, famed for its beauty across all seasons, even in winter!

Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, USA, is the world’s prettiest flower garden

1. Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, United States | Overall score: 6.86/10
The stunning Longwood Gardens is crowned the prettiest garden in the world, scoring 6.86 out of 10. It’s a botanical garden comprising over 1,077 acres of gardens, woodlands and meadows in the United States. 

Sitting just outside of Philadelphia, Longwood Gardens is an accessible source of beauty, with over 10,000 species and varieties of plants to explore. Guests can explore the lush, formal gardens, open meadows, and winding paths to breathtaking Brandywine Valley vistas. 

Longwood Gardens proudly holds a 5-star review rating, and 19% of reviewers describe it as “beautiful”. The winning gardens also had among the highest volumes of posts on social media (307,185 Instagram posts and 6,096 TikTok tag mentions), as well as a 22.2% increase in searches over the last two years.

2. Shinjuku Gyo-en, Tokyo, Japan | Overall score: 6.83/10

Shinjuku Gyo-en is one of Tokyo’s most famous gardens and the second prettiest flower garden in the world, with a score of 6.83 out of 10. Visitors love to share snapshots of the beautiful scenes, with 713,595 posts on Instagram and 4,550 TikTok tags — showing off the cherry blossoms in spring and the fields that turn into sprawling sheets of silk in the winter. 

This garden offers tranquillity in the midst of one of the world’s busiest urban cities. There are three different sections to explore. First, the Japanese landscape garden has large ponds dotted with islands and bridges, followed by the English garden, with open lawns and cherry trees, and lastly, the symmetrical French garden. 

The park isn’t an expensive activity to add to your Japan itinerary either, with admission priced at just £2.61.

3. Pukekura Park, New Plymouth, New Zealand | Overall score: 6.69/10

Pukekura Park is in the heart of New Plymouth in New Zealand and is a must for anyone wanting to visit one of the world’s prettiest gardens. It scored 6.69 out of 10 and has an average Tripadvisor score of a perfect 5 — 30% of these reviews even mentioned the word “beautiful”. 

Walking through this garden, you’ll be met with plenty to do. There are two lakes with rowboats you can rent during the summer, fountains, and even a waterfall, as well as a tea house, playgrounds, and cricket grounds across the acres.

4. Kenroku-en, Kanazawa, Japan | Overall score: 6.58/10

Another Japanese entry is Kenroku-en, in fourth place with an overall score of 6.58. There are over 496,232 Instagram posts of the garden, and one of the main attractions is the large artificial pond,  called Kasumigaike, surrounded by stunning plum and cherry blossoms - perfect for a picture. 

This garden isn’t just for spring or summer either. If you visit in winter, you can see the traditional technique of yukitsuri (translates to “snow hanging”), which protects the tree branches from heavy snow.

5. Volksgarten, Vienna, Austria | Overall score: 6.52/10

Famous for its rose garden, Volksgarten in Vienna, Austria, is officially the world’s fifth prettiest flower garden. It received an overall score of 6.52 out of 10 and has had an 89.7% increase in searches over the last two years. 

As part of Hofburg Palace, this garden is home to the Theseus Temple, Sisi Memorial, and Grillparzer Memorial — so there is plenty to explore for any history fans out there.

Six of the world’s prettiest flower gardens have free admission

If you’re looking for a free activity to add to your travel plans and still explore the world’s most beautiful gardens, look no further than these destinations. 

In Europe, you can head for Austria and Norway to visit the Volksgarten, Mirabell Palace or Arctic–Alpine Botanic Garden. 

The Arctic–Alpine Botanic Garden is something special. It’s the world’s northernmost botanical location, which means you can find rare Arctic plants and colourful flowers from polar regions. 

Further afield, you can find places like Pukekura Park (the third prettiest flower garden in the world!) in New Zealand, the Singapore Botanic Gardens, or the Botanical Garden of Medellín in Colombia. 

Methodology

Titan Travel created a seed list of the most famous gardens from articles such as Veranda, The Times and TimeOut.

Google Ads Keyword Planner was used to determine the increase in searches over the last two years.

We also took each garden's number of Instagram hashtags and TikTok tags.

Tripadvisor was used to find the total number of reviews for each garden, the average review score out of five, and the number of reviews for mentioning "beautiful".

The entry cost for a single adult for each garden was taken from official websites and converted into GBP, USD and EUR. Where possible, summer admission prices were taken.

To create the final score, we gave each garden a normalised score out of 10 before taking an average of these scores.

All data was collected on 18/04/2024 and is correct as of then.