In Maria Semple’s excellent and highly original new novel Go Gentle, a key scene at the book’s dramatic conclusion takes place in the formal gardens of a fictional New York City historical house and gallery where the “gloriette” plays a pivotal role. This got me thinking about garden follies, and how much interest and whimsey they can bring to what might otherwise be standard issue landscape architecture. When I lived near Parc Monceau in Paris, famous for its many follies, we used to create birthday party treasure hunts for our daughters where the clues were hidden in the various follies (thus sneaking in a little art history lesson before the cake). Some of our best family memories were created there.

Here we explore some of the most unique and interesting of the famous follies globally to add to your botanical travel itineraries. 

What exactly is a folly?

A garden folly is an ornamental structure built primarily for pleasure, spectacle or atmosphere rather than practical necessity. The great age of the folly was the 18th century, when Britain and Europe embraced the informal landscape garden as an alternative to the rigid geometry of the formal French garden. Georgian landowners commissioned ruins, temples, towers, grottoes, pagodas and imaginary buildings to create surprises along a garden walk, frame distant views and evoke the picturesque. They could also signal erudition, political allegiance, wealth or an appetite for the exotic. At their most extravagant, follies turned the landscape into a theatrical set. Kew’s gardens in London, for example, once contained an extraordinary collection of ornamental buildings representing everything from ancient Rome to China and Moorish Spain.

A folly and a belvedere are not quite the same thing. A folly is defined by its ornamental or fanciful character; a belvedere is defined by its purpose: it is a structure designed to provide a good view. A building can therefore be both. The Gloriette de Buffon in Paris is the clearest example on this list, explicitly designed as a belvedere, while Kew’s Great Pagoda also functions as one because its height was intended to provide commanding views.

‍

1. The Dunmore Pineapple, 1761 — Falkirk, Scotland

Few follies have achieved such instant icon status as the Dunmore Pineapple, a stone summerhouse crowned by an enormous pineapple. Built for John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, at Dunmore Park, the original garden pavilion dates to 1761; the pineapple superstructure appears to have been added later, probably after his return from Virginia in 1777. 

The fruit was no random flourish. In 18th-century Britain, pineapples were the ultimate horticultural flex: exotic, difficult and expensive to grow, and therefore potent symbols of hospitality and status. They cost thousands of pounds and were even rented out as spectacles at aristocratic dinner parties, too expensive to eat. Today the Dunmore Pineapple it is one of Scotland’s most recognisable follies and, unusually, can be experienced as holiday accommodation through the Landmark Trust. 

2. The Jealous Wall, 1760 — Belvedere, County Westmeath, Ireland

Ireland’s largest folly, this may also be the world's greatest architectural expression of sibling rivalry. Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvedere, commissioned the enormous Gothic wall after his brother George built a larger house nearby that intruded upon his view. Rather than tolerate the sight, Rochfort simply blocked it.

The result resembles a ruined medieval abbey, complete with pointed openings, turning an act of spite into picturesque scenery. The story becomes even darker because Rochfort had already imprisoned his wife, Mary Molesworth, after accusing her of an affair with his brother Arthur. The wall therefore belongs to a particularly gothic chapter of Georgian domestic history: jealousy made limestone.

3. The Needle’s Eye, c.1730 — Wentworth, South Yorkshire, England

The Needle’s Eye is a 14-metre-high sandstone pyramid pierced by a narrow carriage arch, standing in the former landscape of Wentworth Woodhouse. Its purpose was essentially theatrical: an architectural eyecatcher along an avenue approaching the estate. At its summit sits an elaborate vase entwined with foliage, an amusingly delicate flourish atop an otherwise monumental pyramid. It is a reminder that the best follies were designed to be encountered as revelations—appearing unexpectedly as one moved through the landscape.

4. The Naumachie, 1778 — Parc Monceau, Paris

Paris’s Parc Monceau was once an extraordinary 18th-century fantasy garden known as the “folie de Chartres.” Designed for the Duke of Chartres by Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, it was conceived as a journey through different times and places, with temples, pyramids, mills, Turkish tents, an obelisk and a naumachia. 

A naumachia traditionally refers to an artificial setting for staged naval battles in ancient Rome. At Monceau, the name was applied to a romantic architectural composition beside the water, complete with a colonnade. It was part of Carmontelle’s revolutionary idea of the garden as a sequence of theatrical scenes. 

The park was completed in 1778 and was a favourite painting spot of the famously garden-loving Claude Monet, and appears in three of his masterpieces.

5. The Gloriette de Buffon, 1788 — Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Perched atop the artificial hill of the Jardin des Plantes’ labyrinth, the Gloriette de Buffon is a petite architectural marvel with an unexpectedly industrial pedigree. Designed by Edmé Verniquet and built in wrought iron around 1786–1788, it was commissioned in honour of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the celebrated naturalist and long-serving director of the Jardin du Roi. 

This is both a folly and a belvedere: its ornamental character makes it a folly, while its elevated position and function make it a belvedere. It is also one of the oldest surviving metal structures in the world and the oldest metal building in Paris. Its motto, Horas non numero nisi serenas—“I count only the happy hours”—could hardly be more appropriate for a garden retreat.

6. The Great Pagoda, 1762 — Kew Gardens, London

At nearly 50 metres high and ten storeys tall, Kew’s Great Pagoda makes most garden follies look positively restrained. Designed by Sir William Chambers for Princess Augusta, it was completed in 1762 and became one of the great expressions of Chinoiserie in European landscape design. 

It is both folly and belvedere: the building was an extravagant ornamental example of Chinoiserie, but its height also provided a spectacular prospect over the gardens. Inspired by Chinese architecture, it was intended as a European interpretation rather than an authentic religious structure. Originally, 80 gilded wooden dragons adorned its roofs. Their disappearance produced one of the garden’s enduring legends: that they were removed and sold to pay George IV’s gambling debts. In reality, they were removed during roof repairs and eventually deteriorated. The dragons were painstakingly recreated during the Pagoda’s 2018 restoration. 

7. The Temple of British Worthies, 1735 — Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England

Stowe took the folly and gave it a political education. Designed by William Kent and completed around 1735, the Temple of British Worthies is a curved garden monument containing 16 busts of figures whom Lord Cobham considered exemplary Britons. They include Shakespeare, Newton, Milton, Elizabeth I, Francis Bacon and John Locke. 

The selection was not politically neutral. The figures embodied the Whig ideals of Cobham and his circle, dividing broadly into thinkers and doers. The result is part memorial, part political manifesto and part garden architecture. It demonstrates why the term “folly” can be misleading: these buildings might be ornamental, but they were often packed with ideas.‍

‍8. The Temple of Apollo, 1765 — Stourhead, Wiltshire, England

At Stourhead, the garden was conceived almost like a landscape painting, with architectural episodes carefully positioned around a lake. The circular Temple of Apollo, designed by Henry Flitcroft in 1765, crowns the composition and was inspired by an ancient temple illustrated in Robert Wood’s Ruins of Palmyra and Ruins of Baalbec. 

Dedicated to the sun god, it stands above the water like a classical apparition. Stourhead’s garden is filled with references to mythology, literature and art, and its carefully orchestrated vistas encourage visitors to experience the landscape as a succession of picturesque scenes. The temple is a quintessential example of the folly as intellectual theatre: architecture becomes a quotation from antiquity.

9. The Gothic Temple, 1762 — Painshill, Surrey, England

Painshill was the creation of Charles Hamilton, who began transforming the estate in 1738 into an experimental pleasure garden filled with lakes, winding paths, exotic planting and architectural surprises. Its Gothic Temple was completed in 1762 and overlooks the lake. 

The building became famous partly because people argued about whether such a structure could genuinely be called Gothic. Horace Walpole dismissed it as an “unmeaning edifice,” objecting that medieval Goths had not built garden temples. The criticism is revealing: follies deliberately played fast and loose with historical accuracy because their purpose was emotional rather than archaeological. 

10. The Cheekwood Birdhouse, Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, Nashville, 2006

The Cheekwood Birdhouse is a deliberately constructed architectural folly created for an architectural competition and summer exhibition. Its designers conceived it as a way of encouraging visitors to “see the natural world from a different perspective.” It is a modern folly rather than a Georgian one, showing that the garden folly is alive and well as a structure that need not be useful, historically accurate or even permanent to have an effect. 

Just like Fleurs de Villes shows, follies exist to make the landscape more imaginative, the journey more surprising and the garden itself a little more like a story.