Making life a holiday with interesting vacation and adventure ideas.

There are many charitable schemes around the world, which encourage gardeners to open their gardens for visits by the general public.

Garden lovers in England and Wales, will find the Garden Finder on the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) web site a very handy resource for planning their visits during the 2006 season.

Another useful resource is the list of similar schemes collated by the NGS team.

Australians have their Open Garden Scheme
In Belgium, there is the Jardins Ouverts-Open Tuinen
While the Dutch enjoy a membership scheme called The Nederlandse Tuinenstichting
The Scots have organized their own Scotland's Gardens Scheme
And in the U.S.A. garden lovers enjoy a national scheme called The Garden Conservancy
Finally, N.G.S. Japan is a scheme organized by the Japanese. Unfortunately, this site is in Japanese but here is a link to the Japanese National Trust which is in English.

Obviously, these open gardens welcome overseas visitors and gardeners from around the world have a common bond. I am sure that there are schemes operating in other countries, if you know of any, please let me know.