Dreaming is allowed.
19.05.2025At least you can dream about these five luxury properties with large, formal gardens, which were recently featured in the online magazine Luxury Defined by Christie’s International Real Estate. And if you have the necessary funds, you can even make your dreams come true, because these gems are all for sale.
Luxury Defined writes on the topic of formal gardens: They are an outward expression of a great estate’s grand design. By imposing order and symmetry on nature, their designers sought to delight – and impress. And impress they did!
The Palace of Versailles’s gardens are integral to its overall design. Louis XIV’s principal gardener and landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, organized the gardens on two axes, creating the illusion of an infinite vista called “the Grande Perspective.” In 18th-century England, a new perspective emerged: While Palladian order and symmetry defined such great country houses as Blenheim Palace, the English landscape designers used great artifice to imitate nature. Their rolling parklands, punctuated by copses, reflecting pools, fountains, ponds, and serpentine lakes, were all as rigorously composed as a great symphony.
Lancelot “Capability” Brown, England’s greatest gardener, compared his designs to the structure of a sentence: “There I make a comma, and there, where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.”
The following five homes with magnificent formal gardens are designed in the French and English traditions and some exquisite variations.
19th-Century Château in Cognac, France
Built in 1880, the ornate 13,509-square-foot limestone residence has retained its original Belle Époque splendor.
Magnificent formal parkland sets the tone for the grandeur within this château in the Cognac wine region.
The imposing entrance hall, with exquisite marble flooring, reveals a staircase with intricate metalwork, spiraling to the upper floors, where 13 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms await. A caretaker’s cottage and several listed outbuildings, configured as offices, garages, and two houses, are surrounded by more than six acres of wooded parkland with a swimming pool, a tennis court, and, a stone’s throw from the riverbank, an enchanting private island.
The Castle of Torre Alfina in Acquapendente, Viterbo, Italy
The Castle of Torre Alfina lies at the heart of Lazio, close to the border of Umbria and Tuscany. This magnificent medieval castle has over the centuries served as a strategic stronghold, a noble residence, and a cultural center. It is composed of five towers.
The gardens, reimagined in the Renaissance style in 1882 by French master architects Henri and Achille Duchêne, offer an elegant and refined setting that intertwines the past with the present. Within are cascading water features, colorful flowerbeds, boxwood hedges in geometric designs, and an enchanting secret garden.
19th-Century Estate in Kapellen, Belgium
This country estate encompasses about 22 acres in the Flanders region of Belgium, about 20 minutes’ drive from the city of Antwerp. The thatched main house, along with the guest house and the caretaker’s residence, offer a combined 11,108 square feet of living space artfully reimagined by Axel Vervoordt.
A fountain lies at the center of the ensemble, a mix of formal gardens, woodlands, a circular swimming pond, and verdant lawns for sports and recreation. The beautiful outdoor kitchen allows for the organization of garden parties or grand-scale events. The stables could also be reconfigured as an events space or leisure complex.
Kenah Hill in Killiney, County Dublin
Kenah Hill sits in stately, Italianate splendor on nearly three wooded acres in Killiney, south Dublin County. There, its welcoming, circular forecourt and three-tiered fountain are set within castellated stone walls and an electronic gate. Built in 1871 and renovated to 21st-century luxury standard, its 10,000 square feet of interior space preserve the Victorian craftsmanship of corniced ceilings, gilded paneling, hand-painted wall treatments, and elegant bay windows with sea views. Stone steps descend to the lawns and glass pavilion, a “crystal palace” housing the heated pool, solarium and service bar.
Villa Lulu in Beverly Hills, California, USA
Villa Lulu is a singular, spectacular estate set on 2.7 verdant acres in the secluded, star-studded enclave on a private road off lower Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. Its private gates and sweeping drive introduce the resplendent gardens. The elegant curves of the villa’s façade open to reveal the vision of its owner, the casino and resort developer Steve Wynn, who acquired the home in 2015 and reimagined it in collaboration with Los Angeles architect William Hablinski and former Wynn Resorts interior designer Roger Thomas.
A swimming pool with an air-conditioned lanai pool house, a pro-grade tennis court, and an air-conditioned spectator-viewing pavilion with a kitchenette complete the picture.
Find further dream homes with a formal garden here.