10 Garden Hotels That Let You Play In The Dirt On Vacation

In a world of giant supermarkets and factory farms, getting in touch — literally — with your food sources feels meaningful. Gardening provides various physical and mental benefits, from exposure to the sun to stimulate vitamin D production to the satisfaction of watching plants and flowers flourish. Whether you’re a novice who doesn’t know an annual from a perennial or a wizard who can turn a weed into a bloom, connecting to the land can be healing.

One way to toil in the soil is at a garden hotel that offers guests hands-on opportunities to sow seeds and pick vegetables. I’ve stayed at several hotels with gardens that provide these interactive experiences, hoping that a pinch of this newfound agricultural wisdom will rub off and enhance my pocket-sized dirt patch in New York City. Ready to get planting? Here are 10 unique garden hotels that offer immersive adventures.

The Weston, Weston, Vermont

I’ve been eyeing the small farms, creameries, and orchards that dot Vermont’s rural landscape for decades. However, I never dug in Green Mountain dirt until I vacationed at The Weston. This upscale property with only nine guest rooms understands how an experience can define luxury.

Here, you can garden alongside farmer Antoinette Kessler, who grows crops that thrive without pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Spend mornings with her plucking vegetables from fields overflowing with zucchini, lettuce, and tomatoes. A sugar shack surrounded by maple-tapped trees and a state-of-the-art greenhouse offer engaging opportunities year-round.

Pendry Natirar, Peapack, New Jersey

If you think New Jersey is all turnpikes and shopping malls, bucolic Somerset County will show you why it's called The Garden State. It's where I go when I crave a rural escape only an hour from New York City.

Pendry Natirar, formerly a Gilded Age estate and now a sophisticated country hotel, features a 12-acre farm with raised garden beds, a greenhouse, production fields, a chicken coop, a sheep pasture, and an apiary. Each provides a bounty for the farm-to-fork menu and fresh botanicals to enhance the spa's pampering treatments.

Farm manager Melinda Hopkins' active gardening workshops follow the rhythms of the seasons. Get dirt under your fingernails in early spring as you learn proper transplanting techniques. As summer fades, the focus turns to seed-saving and soil-building strategies. Don't leave without meeting Elvis, the friendly rooster, and tasting the popcorn from corn grown here.

Castle Hot Springs, Morristown, Arizona

Castle Hot Springs is a Sonoran Desert oasis punctuated with natural hot springs that help irrigate over 150 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers.

Hands-on gardening workshops and in-the-field tastings will help you to start or maintain a vibrant home garden. For guests who enjoy sipping a potent potable, the farm-to-bar mixology class integrates just-picked herbs into refreshing cocktails.

In Los Angeles, backyard gardens flourish in the subtropical climate. The Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, located in a bedroom community in the shadow of the rugged Santa Monica Mountains, features gardening workshops via its Center for Health & Wellbeing. You’ll discuss soil health, composting, and patio containers as you snack on nutritious nibbles and plant your own mini-garden.

The Woodstock Inn & Resort, nestled in New England's postcard-pretty Kedron Valley, is home to Kelly Way Gardens, where a mushroom glen, robust vegetable patch, and nutrient-dense superfoods provide a holistic food supply for the resort's restaurants.

Visits from May through October include gardening and flower-arranging workshops, barn dinners, and tomato tastings. Show-stopping garden displays evolve with the seasons. One autumn visit, I strolled through Gourdwalk, a tunnel where hanging gourds of every shape and size were like a natural cocoon.

The patchwork of flower beds and rambling gardens surrounding Carmel Valley Ranch offer abundant ways to explore your food sources. Feed the chickens, pick herbs, or suit up like a beekeeper and catch the buzz of honeybees at the apiary. The seasonal DIY wreath-making workshop uses garden greenery, seeds, and twigs to craft a handcrafted keepsake.

A favorite with high-profile guests seeking a nature-centric respite in the Great Smoky Mountains, Blackberry Farm sits on land farmed for centuries. A windfall of namesake wild blackberries in summer will stain your fingers purple.

Farmstead experiences include visits with expert gardeners who employ time-tested practices to yield a bumper crop of plump fruit and heirloom vegetables. The garden is an open-air classroom where guests of all ages indulge their curiosity with interactive tours, foraging, and tastings.

In a remote coastal corner of Northern California, Mendocino is as lush and fertile as the Garden of Eden. The certified organic garden at the Stanford Inn by the Sea, ranked among the 10 best eco-friendly hotels in the U.S., has been part of the guest experience for generations.

Stroll the prolific gardens, which supply the inn's vegan Ravens restaurant, or dive deeper with a hands-on class. In the basic organic gardening class, you’ll get acquainted with an array of edible flowers and pick leafy greens. The biointensive gardening class focuses on maximizing crop yield in a minimal space.

Sicily’s trifecta of volcanic soil, abundant sunshine, and farming techniques that favor quality above quantity makes for stellar fruits and veggies. I lived in Italy for years, but I never tasted produce that was so delicious until I visited Sicily.

Verdura Resort is a stunning seaside property on Sicily’s southwestern coast. Verdura means vegetable in Italian, a name that fits like a glove. On one autumn visit, citrus trees perfumed the air, and the vegetable patch was brimming with eggplant and tomatoes. I picked perfectly ripe produce used to make caponata, a zesty blend of eggplant, capers, olives, and tomatoes, cooked in the garden’s kitchen with olive oil from Verdura’s grove.

The Caribbean island of Saint Lucia is famed for its Pitons, twin volcanic peaks majestically rising from the sea. It's where you'll find BodyHoliday, a resort with a hillside garden that's a springboard for plant-based meals rooted in the I-Tal culinary tradition. Originating in Jamaica and closely associated with the Rastafarian lifestyle, the term I-Tal (or Ital) is derived from the word vital and emphasizes the benefits of eating unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

Guests are welcome in the garden. I gathered produce in verdant fields as the staff shared insights into the I-Tal principles used to cultivate tangy Kaffir limes and rainbow chard that the chef wove into an al fresco feast.