It was in 2006 that Peter Moxley decided that his personal passion for gardening and botany should be transferred to his business life and, with the assistance of his father, Barry, they launched Worldwide Garden Tours.

It is part of the family-owned Individual Holidays business but it is run and managed separately by Peter.  The very first garden tour was to the annual Flower Festival in Madeira and has now expanded to include Italy, Grenada, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.

“Our ethos is that we only run garden tours when we know they will be successful and this comes down to a combination of attractive prices, excellent guides and a variety of beautiful gardens, many of which are not normally open to the public,” explains Peter.

“The real secret is having tour guides who love gardens and gardening just as much as the guests.  We take an enormous amount of time and trouble to find the right people and we have the balance absolutely right.  We have to act with utter discretion with some garden owners who shy away from publicity.  Access to them is purely through the local contacts of our tour guides.”

It is ten years on from the launch, and Worldwide Garden Tours’ continue to offer a fantastic array of destinations and provide opportunities to visit some of the world’s most beautiful gardens, many of which are very private and exclusive to the company.

Peter describes himself as a very “traditional” gardener and, every three years, totally rejuvenates his compact town-house garden in Hertfordshire.

“Although I love trees, the restrictions on space means that I can only plant compact growing ornamentals.  I particularly love bulbs and container gardening.   One of the great thrills of my job is being able to steal ideas from a huge variety of gardens and transfer them to my own garden,” he adds.