France’s Loire Valley is known as the “Garden of France.” Wandering off the well-trod châteaux route, I took a discovery tour of unique gardens of the Loire. In this series of four articles, the first, “Chedigny,” appeared in the October 2015 issue. Here is the second. — YMH

How many historic, over-the-top, Loire architectural monuments to money and power can one ooh and ahh over before château fatigue settles in? I knew I’d reached my limit...

It is not the most northerly botanic garden in the world but one of the most northerly gardens, sharing that distinction with those hardy plants shivering on the edge of the Arctic in Norway and Russia.

No matter! When I learned of the existence of Lystigarður Akureyrar, a botanic garden located in the far-northern reaches of Iceland in the town of Akureyri, I looked forward to wandering its paths as a highlight of my late-September/early-October 2014 Iceland Ring Road driving...

The expanse of sculpted white marble titled “The Poet’s Dream” struck me as pretty awful. Located near the Palais de la Découverte, just off the Champs-Élysées, it depicts 19th-century poet Alfred de Musset swooning over his past lovers — affairs now forever cast in stone, albeit the massive sculpture’s 1910 creator, Alphonse Emmanuel de Moncel de Perrin, is little remembered and rightfully so, or so I thought as I turned to leave. 

Just to the right...