FLOWER BEDS: HOTELS WITH GREAT GARDENS

Continuing our series on inspiring places to stay ("This quarter's quarters"), Rosanna de Lisle unearths hotels with great gardens ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2009

The garden-lover is rarely far from Eden. The Royal Horticultural Society recommends 140 outstanding gardens to visit in Britain, plus 23 across Europe. And all over the world, from Kew to Singapore, well-established botanic gardens brim with exotic flora (and, in the case of Sydney, fruit bats too). Rare, however, is the Eden where you won’t be steered towards the gift shop and exit at dusk: few of the finest gardens have a hotel in their midst.

The RHS, collaborating with Cox & Kings, runs tours to some of the most botanically fascinating parts of the planet—Madeira, South Africa, China, Japan and Iran—but puts guests in three- or four-star chains such as Mercure and Novotel. This may be because the green-fingered tend to be down-to-earth in their tastes, and a 15-night gardens tour of Australia is already quite an undertaking (from £5,195 per person; +44 (0)20 7873 5000). But I suspect it’s also because hotels with real gardener’s gardens, as opposed to attractive landscaping, are unusual. These five all have an interesting history—of both flora and stone—and are just as lovely indoors as out.

Bodysgallen Hall, North Wales
This Grade I house sits in 200 acres of picturesque landscape above Llandudno. Over 30 years, the head gardener has unearthed and restored the historic gardens, which include a 17th-century parterre, formal rose garden, rockeries, lily ponds and limestone outcrops. Sleep in stately splendour in the house or take a cottage in the grounds. The owners, Historic House Hotels, last year gave it to the National Trust. Hotel operations continue, with the profits going to the trust.
Double B&B from £175. +44 (0)1492 584466

Barnsley House, Gloucestershire
Rosemary Verey designed and tended this garden until her death in 2001. She might not recognise her 17th-century house now, with its B+B Italia beds and twin bath tubs, but she’d know her garden. The formal lawns, luxuriant planting and gothic folly are all still there, as is Verey’s head gardener, Richard Gatenby, who supplies the chef with unusual varieties of fruit, vegetables and herbs and gives garden tours (from £29 per person, with lunch). The garden is open to diners as well as residents, but check in advance as the hotel was up for sale in May.
Double B&B from £185. +44 (0)1285 740000

Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles
Bel-Air (top) was developed in the 1920s by Alphonso Bell as “a haven of rest...in big, noisy, congested Los Angeles”. And the gardens of the Hotel Bel-Air, which have evolved since the 1940s, still offer sanctuary from the seething metropolis: 12 acres, deep in a wooded canyon, landscaped with 2,000 botanical species. These include a 60-year-old lonchocarpus tree, a 12ft bird of paradise, cascades of bougainvillea and a colony of hummingbirds. Swans drift across a lake while guests lounge round an oval pool, kept cool with frozen grapes and jasmine popsicles.
Double, room only, from $440. + 1 (310) 472 1211

Le Prieuré d’Orsan, Loire, France
This 12th-century priory lay derelict until two Parisian architects gave it the kiss of life in the 1990s. Inspired by tapestries and illuminations, they re-created the medieval jardin clos, a garden of distinct rooms, where monks once toiled. Around a central fountain, 11 gardens—from a parterre of wheat and broad beans to a potager labyrinth—are separated by fences of coppiced chestnut and willow. There are seven bedrooms, two with private gardens.
Double half-board from €380. Gardens open daily (€9); closed Nov-March. + 33 (0)2 48 56 27 50

Villa Cimbrone, Ravello, Italy
The gardens of Villa d’Este, on Lake Como, are more famous but for me Villa Cimbrone’s position, teetering on the Amalfi coast with views across the Gulf of Salerno, gives it the edge. The 20-acre park was largely created by an English politician, Lord Grimthorpe, who bought the villa in 1904 and built terraces, follies and cloisters in Moorish and Venetian style, planted umbrella pines, ilex hedges, wisteria and roses, and placed classical busts and urns at every turn. The gardens are open to the public daily (€6), but closed from November to March, and disabled access is difficult.
Double B&B from €330. +39 (0)89 857459