A journey through green Switzerland: Do you know the smallest, rockiest or highest garden in the country?

Fasolin kept a large Excel list and collected entries on gardens in all cantons. He always asked himself why he recommended visiting the garden. The result is a garden guide without blinders. “For me, everything belongs to garden culture: Wherever you design a space with plants, a garden will form.”

If Sarah Fasolin were to recommend just one garden in Switzerland that you must know about, she names two: the Merian Gardens in Basel and the Château de Vullierens near Morges VD. Lush green places with lots of diversity. “These gardens have many features that make a garden tour attractive,” she says. Collections, intimate spaces, natural areas, cafe. “These are places you can always go during gardening season.”

A small garden selection of superlatives:

If a fly seed germinates and produces blue flowers in the Brunner private garden in Mellingen AG, the little plant is in trouble. Only yellow, orange and red belong here. The gravel garden completely adapts to the environment: the gravel matches the Reuss flowing from the past; flowers and shrubs capture colors that are already there, like the yellow of sunshades. “As a result, the house and garden look very harmonious,” says garden expert Fasolin.

This park in Zofingen AG shows that its last redesign was not so long ago. Sarah Fasolin says that an ordinary park was originally created on the site of an old cemetery. Thanks to the great commitment of the population and a lot of volunteer work, the redesign took place in 2022. Today’s natural rose garden is open to the public and heavily visited. Part of the garden is the school garden where vegetables are planted.

A sheltered garden was created on the roof of a property in Basel, 16 meters above the ground. The Geitlinger roof garden is not a terrace on the fourth floor, but a real garden with shrubs, fruit-bearing trees, water, paved paths and a pergola. «Access to the garden is via a narrow staircase directly from the apartment. The tenant is a passionate hobby gardener,” says Fasolin.

In front of a 200-year-old farmhouse in Wenslingen BL you can find a piece of England: the garden of the Buess couple. Following a trip to England in 2000, the couple completely redesigned their own garden, excited by the combination of sight lines and natural impact with best-thought-out planning. “Your garden is based on the English cottage garden but with its own signature so it doesn’t look foreign,” says Sarah Fasolin.

The starting location is extremely unfavorable for designing a garden: the terrain is rocky and steep. But they didn’t let that stop them in the garden of Villa Felsenburg in Evilard near Biel BE. The currently listed garden is nearly 100 years old and surprises with its magical paths, a mix of cultivated and wild plants, a grotto, pergola, faux buildings and figures by artist Christine Lara Burri, who lives with her husband Konrad. Villa is alive.

This garden in Wichtrach BE welcomes visitors from the animal kingdom! It is designed to promote biodiversity. “You can also design a natural garden to be aesthetically pleasing,” says Sarah Fasolin. This garden by Kathrin Bärtschi demonstrates this. The site includes a cottage garden, dry stone walls, biotope, gravel fields, poor meadows, swimming pool and kitchen garden. Swallows, wild bees and midwife frogs, among others, feel at home here.

If you want to experience the abundance of flowers in spring, you should go to Ticino. For example, in the camellia park in Locarno. The trees are full of flowers, just like the soil. “You’re basically bathed in flowers and you can’t get enough of them,” says garden journalist Fasolin. Nearly 1,500 different camellias can be seen in the park right next to the lake. If you want to see more spring blooms from there: Gambarogno Botanical Garden has the largest collection of magnolias in the world.

A fence, a tree, a few crops. Although this garden in Julier Pass is small, it is immediately obvious that it is a garden. “That’s the main function of the garden: It’s something enclosed to protect the world inside from the world outside,” says Sarah Fasolin. That’s why generations of landscape architecture students were shown a picture of this garden on Bivio GR, which gave this little thing celebrity status.

This garden has its own small valley: the botanical garden near Aubonne in the canton of Vaud is the largest such facility in Switzerland. The basic structure, consisting of walking paths, tree groups and open areas, was designed by a landscape architect in the 1970s. More than 4,500 species and varieties of trees grow here and are signposted for visitors. The large collection of magnolias, dog roses and hydrangeas is interesting. The colors of fruit trees blooming in spring are pleasing to the eye, and the colors of deciduous trees in autumn are pleasing to the eye.

In a spectacular setting on the ridge of the panoramic mountain Rochers-de-Naye, 2000 m above sea level. M. The alpine garden is La Rambertia. Close to 1,000 lime-loving plants can be seen along the road above Montreux VD. Switzerland has never been a trendsetter in garden design, says Sarah Fasolin. “But we have developed alpine gardens and have achieved a lot in this area.” They were created to protect mountain plants that are threatened by the development of tourism.