From lush plants to aesthetically pleasing layouts, botanical gardens offer us nature to explore and a multitude of plants to admire. When stepping into an oasis of flowers, there are many opportunities to photograph the best blooms of the season!

Interested to find out which botanical gardens in the world we enjoy the most, Savoy Stewart decided to compile Instagram data for 70 popular botanical gardens, highlighting the most Instagrammable botanical gardens that we can’t get enough of photographing and sharing!

Here are the top 5 in the world:

1.Gardens by the Bay, Singapore – # 1,209,129

Savoy Stewart can reveal that Gardens by the Bay in Singapore is crowned the most Instagrammable botanical garden in the world, with over 1.2 million photos tagged! Located in the bay area of Singapore, this futuristic national garden is dedicated to the country’s vision of creating a “Garden City”. With the world’s largest greenhouse Flower Dome, architectural masterpiece Supertrees, and Children’s Garden, it is no wonder that it is such a popular location for horticulture lovers and families from across the world. 

Gardens by the Bay – source Shutterstock

2. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, England – # 807,588

Coming in second place is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England with over 807 thousand hashtags on Instagram. From a royal palace in the 18th century to a modern day world-leading garden and research institution, Kew Gardens boasts a large and diverse collection of over 50,000 different plants and around seven million preserved specimens. When you scroll through the Kew Garden tags on Instagram, you are also greeted with images of Temperate House, the timeless Victorian-era greenhouse, known as the largest Victorian glass structure in the world

Kew Gardens, London (photo source: Shutterstock)

3.Keukenhof, Netherlands  –  # 665,836

The floral spring garden Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands is in third place with 665 thousand photos tagged. With 7 million flower bulbs planted each year, Keukenhof is known for its large range of flowers, and especially for tulips. Despite its limited eight weeks of opening time annually, over 1.5 million visitors around the world come to catch the full bloom of tulips during mid March and May.

Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands – source Shutterstock

4. Kenroku-en Garden, Kanazawa Japan – #448,508

Kenroku-en Garden, Kanazawa Japan – photo source Wikimedia Commons

5. Jardin Majorelle – Morocco – #298,467

Jardin Majorelle – Morocco – photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Other gardens who made the list:

US’s Most Instagrammable Botanical Gardens

With 284,203 hashtags on Instagram, Longwood Gardens, located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, ranks sixth in the worldwide results, and as the most Instagrammable botanical garden in the US!

In the borough of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Botanic Garden places second in the US and 11th in the world with 109,220 tags on the app. 

BBG’s Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden[24] was one of the first Japanese gardens to be created in an American botanic garden, and reportedly the first one to be accessible free of charge. It was constructed between 1914 and 1915 at a cost of $13,000, a gift of early BBG benefactor and trustee Alfred Tredway White, and it first opened to the public in June 1915. The garden was created by Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881–1943). (source wikipedia)

Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe ranks third in the US with 97,075 Instagram tags, which places 13th overall in the worldwide rankings.

Circle Botanical Gardens Chicago, Il (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Methodology

  1. Savoy Stewart collated a list of 70 popular botanical gardens from around the world, determined through multiple reputable sources such as Timeout, Lonelyplanet and Booking.com. The full list of references could be found here. Gardens that appeared most often were selected. 
  2. ​Each location was then entered into Instagram and the number of tags noted. The name of the place was used along with other relevant tags. Multiple languages were considered where necessary. For example, #theeastgardensoftheimperialpalace, #皇居東御苑, #imperialpalaceeastgarden, etc. All tags used can be found in the full datasheet. 
  3. Tags that used the name of the place but referred to something other than the place itself, were excluded.
  4. Data was collected in August 2022 and is subject to change.