Top 10 botanical gardens

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - For travelers with little interest in beaches, golf
or spas but a passion for horticulture, travelandleisure.com has come up with a
list of the world's top 10 botanical gardens.

Elizabeth Scholtz, director emeritus of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, said there's been a huge increase in
garden travel.

"Gardens are such a wonderful refuge, and more and more, people are looking
for a haven from the stress of modern life," said Scholtz.

Following is TravelandLeisure.com's top 10 gardens list which is not
endorsed by Reuters:

1. Brooklyn Botanic Garden,
Brooklyn, New York

Founded in 1910, this 52-acre New York institution boasts 12,000 resident
plant species as well as the Steinhardt Conservatory, Shakespeare Garden, and
the C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum. It also boasts a unique claim to fame as in 2006,
one of the rarest, largest and stinkiest flowers, the Sumatran Amorphophallus
titanium or corpse flower, blossomed there.

2. Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Western Cape, South
Africa

An 89-acre spread in the eastern slopes of Cape Town's Table Mountain,
Kirstenbosch is remarkable aesthetically and historically. Founded in 1913, this
is the first national botanical garden established for the express purpose of
local flora conservation. Perhaps most famous is the garden's trademark Crane
Flower, a yellow version of which is named Mandela's Gold.

3. Kyoto, Japan

On what was once a country estate on the outskirts of Kyoto, this 4.9-acre
garden is as of 1994 on UNESCO's World Heritage list. An 11th-century temple
complex created for the worship of Buddha Amida, Byodoin blends Chinese- and
Japanese-style pavilions, a pond, and a circuit of bridges.

4. Jardin Botanique de Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Established in 1931, this 185-acre garden has adapted admirably to the
Quebecois winter. The outdoor and indoor offerings are equally compelling. The
Insectarium, with its 160,000 live and preserved specimens, is a favorite with
its standout resident and collection's mascot, the monarch butterfly.

5. Reid's Palace, Madeira, Portugal

This seaside spread, established in 1891 by wine baron William Reid and since
acquired by Orient-Express, reinforces Madeira's reputation as the Garden of the
Atlantic. Set atop a cliff, the Palace is surrounded by 10 acres of semitropical
gardens where Winston Churchill reportedly contemplated his memoirs and George
Bernard Shaw learned to tango.

6. Claude Monet Foundation at Giverny, Normandy, France

No matter how many times you've seen Monet's Water Lilies, there's no
preparing for the living painting that is Giverny. Created in the 1880's and
90's and inspired by Monet's fascination with Japanese pastoral prints, this 2.5
acre estate is where the artist lived, painted, and gardened until his death in
1926.

7. Seychelles
National Botanical Gardens, Seychelles

The Seychelles' national tree, the coco de mer, is a highlight of the
15-acre, 107-year-old National Botanical Gardens. It's surrounded by cabbage
palms, walking palms, and Latanier Hauban palms and an endless assortment of
tropical flowers but however impressive the plants, they're rivalled by their
backdrop -- a range of jungle-smothered mountains.

8. Biltmore Estate,
Asheville, North Carolina

Built at the turn of the 20th century by George Washington Vanderbilt III, he
hired the so-called founding father of U.S. landscape architecture, Frederick
Law Olmsted, to design the grounds. Now the estate's 8,000 acres encompass an
Italian garden, an English walled garden, and an Azalea Garden.

9. Tohono Chul
Park, Tucson, Arizona

Tohono Chul is a 49-acre study in color and variety. From the Hummingbird
Garden's indigenous salvia and honeysuckle to the flowering desert ironwood
trees that stand outside the property's 1937 adobe house, life abounds. Plants
used medicinally and ceremonially by the Tohono O'odham people make up the
garden.

10. Andromeda
Botanical Gardens, St. Joseph, Barbados

Set along a stream, embellished with ponds and waterfalls, and overlooking
the Atlantic, this six-acre enclave has amassed one of the Caribbean's best
collections of indigenous and imported tropical plants since horticulturist Iris
Bannochie began her work here in 1954.