I'M EMBARRASSED to admit how few famous gardens I've seen. Mostly I just read about them. Gardeners are such a well-traveled lot, dropping enticing tidbits about the dahlias at Great Dixter or the staggering biodiversity of Kirstenbosch in South Africa, then asking incredulously, "You haven't seen so-and-so? You have to go."

I'd like to. But how do they do it? I've never been able to leave home for weeks at a time. What might be happening in my own garden while I'm out looking at someone else's? Luckily for us stay-at-homes, most gardeners are eager to share all the wonders they see on their travels.

Dick Turner, editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine, has led garden tours for 22 years. He's most thrilled to visit private gardens, recommending The Garden Conservancy Open Days Program (www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule). With the conservancy's directory in hand, you can design your own tour. The UK's National Garden Scheme offers a "Yellowbook" packed with gardens; Australia and New Zealand have equivalent programs.

Turner considers the 1,000-acre estate of Chatsworth in Derbyshire to be one of the finest English landscape gardens. Great Dixter is another favorite, with its ancient house, meadow and tropical garden. He calls Levens Hall, with its hedging, columns and topiary on the edge of the Lake District, an "exceptional garden filled with whimsical things . . . You can't even be sure what most of them are." Turner thinks the Chinese Garden in Portland is the most important garden destination in the Northwest, and in California, he recommends the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek for its residential scale and superb collection of cacti and succulents.

The Venice Home and Garden Tour in May "is fabulous," says Gillian Mathews, owner of Ravenna Gardens. Venice, Calif., that is. The walking tour features 30 ultracontemporary homes and gardens full of fresh ideas. Mathews has been leading tours for the Northwest Horticultural Society for a decade; she especially loves LongHouse Reserve, the art-filled garden of Jack Lenor Larsen in East Hampton, N.Y., as well as Chanticleer Gardens, a historic estate and botanic garden in Wayne, Pa.

Even though it took tour leader Greg Graves 39 hours to get home the last time he visited Tibet, it's the place he'd most like to return to. He loved the woodlands rich in familiar plants growing wild. His current favorite? The elevated High Line in New York City, which blew him away with its intense horticulture and views of the city.

Garden designer Doug Bayley is an aficionado of Italian gardens. His not-to-be-missed list includes Villa Gamberaia near Florence with its views of the Arno Valley and the Ninfa Gardens south of Rome. Ninfa is considered the most romantic garden in the world for its medieval setting and out-of-time atmospherics.

Seattle Times columnist Ciscoe Morris prefers Italy's Villa D'Este outside of Rome for its 500 fountains, including a famous water organ. In France, he's crazy about the Exotic Garden of Monaco, with gigantic cacti and succulents bursting out of the hillside overlooking the harbor. In England he recommends the surprisingly tropical Tresco Abbey in the Scilly Isles.

If all this inspired garden touring leaves you feeling like a provincial homebody, as it does me, take comfort in the words A.A. Milne put into the mouth of Winnie the Pooh: "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.