Four hotels with great gardens

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Coming up roses in Rome

The Secret Garden of Rome’s Hotel de Russie is an institution unto itself. In the early 19th century Giuseppe Valadier, the hotel’s architect, was given permission to shape the slope of the Pincio hill, which ascends directly behind the hotel towards Villa Medici, into a series of terraces and grottoes, which he planted with tall Mediterranean date palms and shade-giving yews. Orange trees release subtle scents, underscoring the sharpness of herbaceous borders. The sound of water burbling from a fountain and waterfall is omnipresent.

From a table down in the hotel’s Stravinskij courtyard bar, the sense is of a wall of vivid greens, blooming here and there with pale-pink and white climbing roses, reminiscent of the great Farnese villa gardens to the north in Lazio’s Tuscia region. No surprise that the aperitivo hour here is Rome’s social ground zero all summer – and open to everyone.

The Newt blossoms in Somerset

Yarlington Lodge’s historical credentials, as well as its location and garden setting, are what convinced its South African owners, Koos Bakker and Karen Roos – of the neighbouring The Newt – that the estate was worth a long and painstaking restoration.

The Somerset property was gifted by Henry VIII to two of his six wives, and reopened last month as an exclusive takeover. It sleeps up to 32 people across three residences, but the jewel is the early-19th-century rectory, surrounded by 12 acres of gardens: lawns, half-a-century-old giant redwoods and flowerbeds (for both cutting and enjoying) for days. The brand-new conservatory, stuffed with hanging and potted plants and designed for day and night entertaining, somehow manages to fit right in.

An urban-rooftop oasis in central London

If you’re London-bound – or work-bound to London – this month, consider a stay (or a staycation) at Ham Yard Hotel, where designer-owner Kit Kemp has created an urban oasis. Its rooftop garden spans 300sq m and is planted with olive, pear and apple trees (blossom-y in spring, fragrant in summer). Beds and basins of flowers abound – roses, foxgloves, hydrangeas and wildflowers – and the herb and vegetable garden provisions both the restaurants and the rooftop cocktail bar, where you can sit and catch an early evening breeze.

(The honey’s also home-sourced; there are two beehives among the blooms.) You’ve got to be a guest to enjoy it, but the hotel is just as delightful – and remarkably tranquil, considering Ham Yard is only a five-minute walk from Piccadilly Circus.

Cultivating history on New Zealand’s South Island

Otahuna Lodge might not be quite as famous (or shouty) as some of the top lodges in its New Zealand competitive set, but its classic, quieter charms are well known by those people who fly halfway around the world to visit historic houses and gardens. The lodge itself was commissioned in 1895 by prominent MP Heaton Rhodes for his Australian wife, and it had turns as a seminary and a commune before coming into the hands of Americans Hall Cannon and Miles Refo in 2006. As dazzling as the house is (and it is, its seven huge suites being full of antiques and art collected by the original owners, who were among the first generation of western tourists to really explore Japan), the gardens almost outdo it. The lion’s share of them are at least a century old, including the vast daffodil beds fronting the property, which became a nationally famous springtime destination in the early 20th century.

There are vegetable gardens, orchards, cutting gardens for the house, exotics and fungi (this was the first hotel I visited that had a growing house for mushrooms). The Dutch garden’s exotic trees (a weeping cherry that blossoms spectacularly, feijoa, palms) shade lanes of feathering shrubs. Hundred-year-old rhododendrons line the trails that meander through the woodland. Even if you’re not a guest at Otahuna you can now book a private tour of the grounds.

@mariashollenbarger