The Netherlands
Only a 30-minute drive from Brazil’s metropolis of São Paulo, the garden of São Roque seems like another world. An abundance of natural variety feels at home on this red earth. The garden is located near the Serra do Mar, a region blessed with a rain forest mountain range along the southeastern coast of Brazil. The city of São Roque was once the main pathway from the west in Paraguay and Bolivia, along which immigrants from Portugal, Italy, Japan and Germany travelled throughout the 20th century. With them came a special and diverse tradition of vegetable and fruit-growing. Even today, São Roque is famous for wine and good food, produced on small family farms. The garden was created in the 1980s on a hugely fruitful piece of land of volcanic origin. It’s situated on a small lake, surrounded by farms and forest, with a promise of peace and diversity for anyone who finds their way there from the busy metropolitan region.