Green spaces are now hard to come by amid the grey concrete in the metropolis that once inspired 17th-century traveller Robert Withers to write: “Nor indeed doth a Turk at any time show himself to be so truly pleased, and satisfied in his senses as he doth in the summer time, when he is in a pleasant garden.”
But though such opportunities are few and far between – for Turks and foreigners alike – in today’s Istanbul, there is still one place where the senses can be so satisfied, a place where, it was said in Ottoman times, the scent of the blossoms could make a person dizzy...
Read the rest of my article about garden tours on the Princes' Islands, “Hidden Gardens Reveal Secrets of Istanbul's Islands,” as it appeared in the May 2011 issue of Time Out Istanbul: jpg