The World’s Top-Rated Botanical Gardens

The ideal place to go for a mildly educational stroll through some curated flora is probably a botanical garden. (Or a botanic garden: The adjectives mean the same thing, though botanical is the slightly more common modifier for garden these days.)

But before we get to the best spots, it might be helpful to cover the basics—namely, what actually is a botanical garden?

What Is a Botanical Garden?
The World’s 20 Best Botanical Gardens

What Is a Botanical Garden?

In 1963, the International Association of Botanic Gardens defined a botanic garden as a garden “open to the public in which the plants are labeled.” According to Botanic Gardens Conservation International’s 2019 definition, other criteria may include “having a reasonable degree of permanence,” “an underlying scientific basis for the collections,” and “exchange of seed or other materials with other botanic gardens, arboreta or research institutions.” The organization also reiterated that the plants should be labeled and the garden open to the public.

In short, a botanical garden is generally one you can visit and know what plants you’re looking at; and many botanical gardens have a focus on research and preservation.

The World’s 20 Best Botanical Gardens

To determine the world’s best botanical gardens, UK-based travel insurance company InsureandGo compiled a list of 100 famous gardens and ranked them based on what percentage of Google reviews were four stars or higher. (A garden needed at least 500 reviews to be included in the rankings.)

It’s not exactly surprising that the United States, the third largest country by area, boasts a high concentration of really great botanical gardens. There are nine in the top 20, from first-place finisher Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Arizona to both members of the last-place tie: Illinois’s Chicago Botanic Garden and Florida’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. That gamut is also an illuminating illustration of just how different a botanical garden can be from the archetypal temperate and meticulously landscaped expanse of, say, London’s Kensington Gardens (12th on the list). The Boyce Thompson Arboretum, naturally, is full of cacti and other desert plant life; while the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, as its name suggests, is a lush oasis of palm trees and moisture-loving flowers.

Australia has three entries in the top 20—Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, and the Adelaide Botanic Garden—and Wales has two. Spain, Singapore, Italy, and South Africa each nabbed a spot. See the whole list below, and find out more about the entries via InsureandGo.

Rank	Name	Location	Percent of Ratings 4 or Higher
1.	Boyce Thompson Arboretum	Arizona, United States	97.7
2.	Plas Cadnant Hidden Gardens	Anglesey, Wales	97.5
3.	Missouri Botanical Garden	Missouri, United States	97.4
4.	Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne	Melbourne, Australia	96.9
5.	Jardí del Túria	Valencia, Spain	96.7
6.	Bodnant Garden	Tal-y-Cafn, Wales	96.6
6.	Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens	Pennsylvania, United States	96.6
7.	National Orchid Garden	Singapore	96.5
7.	Trebah Garden	Cornwall, England	96.5
7.	Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden	Hawaii, United States	96.5
7.	Longwood Gardens	Pennsylvania, United States	96.5
8.	Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney	Sydney, Australia	96.4
9.	The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University	Massachusetts, United States	96.1
9.	Villa Taranto	Verbania, Italy	96.1
10.	Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden	Cape Town, South Africa	96
10.	Adelaide Botanic Garden	Adelaide, Australia	96
11.	Naples Botanical Garden	Florida, United States	95.8
12.	Kensington Gardens	London, England	95.7
13.	Chicago Botanic Garden	Illinois, United States	95.5
13.	Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden	Florida, United States	95.5

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