Italy fares extremely well in 'The 25 Essential Gardens to See in Your Lifetime', a list put together by six horticultural experts and published recently by The New York Times. Italy and the UK topped the list, each with five gardens, with three of the Italian gardens located in the Lazio region around Rome, one in Tuscany and one in the northern Piemonte region.

Ninfa

Italy's highest-ranked garden, Ninfa, came in third place on the list. Located about 80 km south-east of Rome, near Sermoneta, this romantic English-style garden has over 10,000 shrubs, plants and flowering trees from all over the world. Belonging to the Caetani family since the 14th century, the site was abandoned in 1382 but in the early 1920s the Caetani family began to create the eight-hectare garden as it is today.