Lur Garden, Spain

Garden rooms are hardly a novel idea. English gardeners have been dividing spaces into neat compartments ever since someone first decided a hedge was more interesting with a gap in it. Yet at Lur Garden, tucked away in a damp Basque valley beneath emerald hills, the familiar is given a thoroughly foreign accent. Created by designer and television presenter Iñigo Segurola, the garden unfolds as a sequence of distinct spaces linked by winding paths, rushing water and an exuberant palette of plants that would look decidedly out of place in the average Cotswolds border. Tree ferns, bananas, giant leaves and architectural succulents lend an almost subtropical air, while Japanese maples replace traditional hedging and colour-themed gardens are reinterpreted with unexpected botanical choices. For photographers, the contrasts are irresistible: moody fern-filled walks, reflections drifting across the Mirror Garden, and bold geometric forms emerging from apparently carefree planting. It’s a garden that rewards careful composition, revealing itself as both a homage to and reinvention of a very British tradition.