4 Hotels With Fabulous Gardens

Airelles Gordes La Bastide, France

With its picturesque hilltop villages and beautiful scenery, the Luberon Valley is one of Provence’s most popular lavender-spotting sites. Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque is one of the most iconic spots for lavender field photographs, just a few minutes’ drive from Gordes. While in the area, stay at the elegan Airelles Gordes, La Bastide. With its antique floor tiles, bouquets of lavender, cherry wood furniture, and floral cottons in reds and greens, it’s the perfect base for road trips. Guests can take advantage of the hotel’s complimentary vintage 2CVs and e-bikes to visit the lavender fields. Don’t leave without investigating L’Isle-sur-la Sorgue for antiques, or relaxing at the hotel’s posh Sisley spa where its range of phyto-aromatic products are another way to enjoy some fabulous florals and reap their benefits. From £795; www.airelles.com/gordes-hotel. 

Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, Sorrento

Perched on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Naples, this is the perfect place to soak up the romance and mystique of Sorrento, which is just outside the decorative gates of the hotel. With its wisteria-clad arches, pretty jasmine terraces, shady nooks and al fresco dining, there’s no escaping the beauty of the gardens, so much so, I found it hard to leave the elegant confines of this grande dame hotel when I stayed. Guests can hire the hotel’s luxury yacht the “Vittoria” and explore the surrounding areas. Sail around the Le Galli islands (where the Sirens tempted Ulysses), lunch at Mariagrazia a secret Italian hideout at Marina del Cantone and stop off to bathe in the thermal springs of Ischia, the island of artists, where La Mortella subtropical garden is often used as a concert venue. Do book one of the sea-facing rooms or suites at the hotel. The Avanti Suite, named after the Billy Wilder film Avanti! starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, evokes the timeless romanticism of the film and has sea views of Mount Vesuvius. Guests have a choice of three dining experiences – the Michelin-starred Terrazza Bosquet, or the more relaxed L’Orangerie and Terrazza Vittoria. The Vittoria Bar, meanwhile, must be one of the atmospheric terraces for aperitivos, anywhere in Italy. From €637; www.excelsiorvittoria.com. 

Ballyvolane House, Co Cork

This lovely family-run country house is surrounded by 80 acres of lush gardens and farmland. At Ballyvolane everyone benefits from the planting carried out by gardeners of the distant and more recent past, as there’s an impressive array of colours and scents throughout the year, from snowdrop drifts just after Christmas, to rhododendrons and azaleas in May. Wisteria on the house and in the walled garden is always a treat as is the laburnum arch, planted in 2000 to mark the new millennium, which flowers in all its glory throughout June. Amateur gardeners will love exploring the three-acre walled garden too, which provides produce for the hotel and as well as botanicals for Ballyvolane’s small batch Irish milk gin, Bertha’s Revenge. At the moment asparagus is in season, while the rhubarb is being used on the menus and in delectable Bertha’s rhubarb martinis. Guests checking in can ramble through the woodlands, explore the orchards and admire the gardens, learn to fly fish on the Blackwater river, or simply cosy up at Ballyvolane and enjoy one of their B&Ts with a good book by the fire or, on a fine day, relaxing on a sun-lounger on the south-facing lawns. Stays start from €280 per room per night with breakfast included; www.ballyvolanehouse.ie. 

Adare Manor, Co Limerick

With over 840 lavish acres to explore of pristine parkland, formal French gardens and wonderful woodlands, this is a great place for summer strolls and to learn more about the majestic trees on Adare Manor’s grounds. In fact its name is intimately connected with the magic of trees — the Irish translation of Adare is Áth Dara, meaning the ford of the oak tree — and preserving and planting trees throughout the estate has become a key pillar of their sustainability programme. With over 16,000 native trees planted at the resort since 2016, over 6,000 more are pledged to be planted over the coming years, adding to the two new wetlands created on the award-winning golf course to mitigate climate change through land-based carbon storage, while also helping with water quality and promoting wildlife diversity. Enjoy some of these majestic trees on a stroll as well as searching for the artworks dotted throughout the grounds, including the huge optimistic striding bronze bear, In Search of Lost Time by sculptor Patrick O’Reilly, a series of ancient ogham stones, brought to Adare Manor from Kerry by Edwin, the 3rd Earl of Dunraven, and 500 delicate bluebell chimes hanging from the branches of the ancient beech trees. The woodland walk is also punctuated with short poems, mysterious footprints of forest animals, encased in clay, and with a life-sized willow stag and his four little friends – three graceful willow hares and a willow squirrel in the trees. Stays start from €1,200 per night; www.adaremanor.com.