Horti-culture is one of 2025’s newest top 10 travel trends, placing gardening and a return to nature
Horti-culture is one of 2025’s newest top 10 travel trends, placing gardening and a return to nature at the forefront of travel plans. According to Skyscanner, 62% of UK travellers enjoy visiting gardens on holiday and 46% garden as a hobby. With people already booking trips to Japan for the cherry blossoms, the blooming sunflower around the UK, or even the tulip fields in Holland, there is one horti-culture heaven that travellers might be forgetting – Sarasota, Florida. Sarasota is the perfect place to reconnect with nature and find rest and relaxation in all its botanical marvels. Here are some of Sarasota’s must-visit nature attractions.
World-renowned and one-of-a-kind – Marie Selby Botanical Gardens: The Downtown Campus and Historic Spanish Points Campus
As the world’s first net-positive botanical gardens, the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is an important sanctuary in Sarasota, showcasing the connection between nature, people, and regional history. The Downtown Campus houses the only botanical garden in the world that focuses on the study and display of epiphytic orchids (plants that grow on other plants), gesneriads, ferns, and other tropical plants, providing people with an educational experience in botany like nowhere else.
On the other side of the gardens, visitors can find the Historic Spanish Points Campus, which showcases native Florida plants and an archaeological record that dates back 5,000 years. This campus will appeal to both botany and history buffs as it is one of the largest archaeological sites on the Gulf Coast. The gardens also foster artistic growth through rotating exhibitions showcasing works from renowned artists and designers, workshops for the public, and their first Artist in Residence (2023-2025) award-winning, visionary artist, writer, and performer Patti Smith.
The one and only Floridian Wild and Scenic River: Myakka River State Park and the Friends of Myakka River
Myakka River State Park is the only river in Florida to be recognised as a Wild and Scenic River Park, proving its unique and significant biodiversity and beauty in flora and fauna alike. It is the perfect place for solo travellers, couples, and families with cycle paths, boat tours, and a canopy walk as well as canoeing, kayaking, an amphitheatre, and several geocaches waiting to be explored. The park is home to manatees, tortoises, and a range of birds such as the roseate spoonbill or the Great Cormorant that is endemic to Florida – rare fowl that even nonbirders can get excited about.
It is sustained through the cooperation of park management and the citizen group Friends of Myakka River. The group helps to conserve the site and organises fun and educational bike rides, Astronomy Nights, and their Moon Over Myakka Fundraising Concert series that combines both the culture that Sarasota specialises in and the nature that Florida is known for, making it an ideal horticulture destination.
A public park like no other: Ted Sperling Park at South Lido Beach Nature Park
Sarasota also offers the incredible opportunity to paddle through tunnels made of mangrove trees. Gently rowing through the mangrove forest of Ted Sperling Park, this nature park features an inspiring variety of plants, which travellers can marvel at while navigating the tunnels. The latter can be crossed with kayak or stand-up paddleboard that can be rented by local companies. There are a number of organised tours available to join in the area, too. The unique overlap of the botanical and the aquatic means a change from the normal fauna that trees usually offer, housing animals such as fish, fiddler crabs, and jellyfish.
Eccentric, artistic, and polished: Bayfront Gardens at The Ringling
For a more manicured excursion, visitors can explore the Mable Ringling’s Rose Gardens at The Ringling grounds, which holds 1,200 types of roses in a vast Italian garden. The best time to visit is six weeks after the flowers are cut back in February and October, as this shows the roses in their prime beauty.
North of the estate Ca’ d’Zan building, visitors can also discover Mable’s Secret Garden. Filled with plants and cuttings that she was given by her friends and neighbours during her winters at Ca ‘d’Zan, the Secret Garden is more relaxed with a wider range of wildlife, including rare, variegated bougainvillaea, tropical bromeliads, and succulents.
A must for any enthusiastic tree spotters, The Ringling is also home to trees such as a tiger’s claw, a rainbow eucalyptus, and 14 banyans dotted all around the estate.
Seven nights at the Embassy Suites Sarasota, including return flights, fully inclusive car hire, bed and breakfast, and resort fee from £1599 per person in May with America As You Like It.
For more information on the horticulture in Sarasota County, visit: https://www.visitsarasota.com/things-to-do/beaches-parks