Top 10 Gardens in Brazil
Brazil's gardens are dominated by Roberto Burle Marx, the modernist who reimagined the country's tropical flora as a landscape vocabulary. His public projects, private estates and museum collections together represent one of the twentieth century's most distinctive contributions to garden art.
1. Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
Founded in 1808 by King João VI, with 6,500 species across 140 hectares at the foot of Corcovado. The Imperial Palms Avenue and the Orchidarium are the iconic features.
2. Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, Rio de Janeiro
Burle Marx's own estate in Barra de Guaratiba, with around 3,500 tropical species he collected personally. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021.
3. Inhotim, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais
A 140-hectare contemporary art park founded by Bernardo Paz in 2006, combining museum-scale art pavilions with one of the largest tropical garden collections in Latin America.
4. Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo
The Niemeyer-designed park (1954), with Burle Marx-influenced plantings, lakes, and a major cluster of São Paulo's modernist art institutions.
5. Copacabana Boardwalk, Rio de Janeiro
Burle Marx's 1970 pavement design in black and white Portuguese mosaic, the most globally recognised piece of Brazilian landscape architecture. Officially a public space rather than a garden.
6. Jardim Botânico de Curitiba
Founded in 1991, with its French-style parterre and iconic glass-and-steel greenhouse. The most-photographed botanical garden in southern Brazil.
7. Parque do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro
A large modernist urban park along Guanabara Bay, laid out by Burle Marx in the 1960s on landfill, with the Museum of Modern Art at its centre.
8. Hotel Tropical Manaus Gardens
A 67-hectare Amazon rainforest interpretation set around a luxury hotel near Manaus, with native palms and orchids in a controlled jungle environment.
9. Jardim Botânico de Brasília
Opened in 1985, with a Cerrado biome interpretive trail and the cathedral-like Tropicarium glasshouse — a relatively young but ambitious modernist botanical garden.
10. Parque Burle Marx, São Paulo
Burle Marx's design for a private estate now open as a public park, with mature plantings of his characteristic species: bromeliads, philodendrons, monstera and palms.
Keep exploring
All of the gardens mentioned in this article are pinned on the interactive map. Use it to plan a route, group nearby sites into a single trip, or compare gardens by style and season.