Virtual garden tours can teach, entertain, entice

AP - Travel is a great way to top off an education, especially for gardeners, who can pick up landscape and planting ideas and advice by seeing others' gardens.

But they don't have to leave home to do it. Virtual garden tours on the computer show actual gardens through video or still images, music, narration and text. About the only thing missing is the scent of the flowers as they scroll by.

Some cyber tours are informational, posted mainly to answer gardening questions. Others are designed to entertain, the digital equivalent of coffee table books or travelogues. Still others are therapeutic and chatty, providing welcome bursts of color and commentary during the dark winter months.

Here's a partial listing of interesting virtual tours:

For children: Cultivate this Michigan State University virtual garden, at http://4hgarden.msu.edu/kidstour/tour.html. Or tour this kids' garden developed by Smith College: http://www.smith.edu/gardens/kidscorner/index.htm).

Private gardens: A woman whose children call her "Moosey" has created an easy-to-follow Web site that helps move you through her New Zealand country garden. It also contains helpful sections about flower shows, containers, flower bulbs and more. http://www.mooseyscountrygarden.com/.

Public gardens: The U.S. Botanic Garden, http://www.usbg.gov/virtual-tour/index.cfm. "We know a lot of people can't get here, but this might give them a sense of what they'd see if they could," said Christine Flanagan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington.

Medicinal and theme gardens: Take a virtual stroll through the University of Washington Medicinal Herb Garden and gather information about the more than 1,000 species in its 21/2 acres of greenhouses and grounds, http://nnlm.gov/pnr/uwmhg/.

Tourist sites centered around prominent gardens: The French Impressionist painter Claude Monet's gardens at Giverny, in Upper Normandy, for example, where he drew much of his inspiration. This is another place that can be visited virtually from your home, at http://giverny.org/gardens/. Or discover Hampton Court Palace in Southeast England, a property once owned by King Henry VIII. See http://www.hamptoncourt.org.uk/gardens/tour.asp.

Institutional/Educational: University of Florida Indian River Research and Education Center at Fort Pierce, http://irrecenvhort.ifas.ufl.edu/virtualgarden/.

See also the Missouri Botanical Garden: http://www.mobot.org/visit/virtualtour.asp. That brings you a six-minute virtual tour plus garden overview and garden detail tours. Or enjoy a virtual walk through the botanic garden at Oxford University: http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/OxfordTour/botanicgardens/default.html.