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

For the tours’ sponsors and creators, there are many benefits. Educational institutions or public gardens use virtual tours to boost donations, enlist public support or build enrollment.

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. “We plan to add a plant collection database with visuals in the near future.” A similar site is the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, http:// www.rbgkew. org.uk/ places/kew/index.html.

• 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 2 1/2 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. For a virtual tour of its 60 acres of riverside gardens, including the celebrated hedge maze, see http://www. hamptoncourt.org.uk/gardens /tour.asp.

• A blog about self-guided and virtual garden tours is at http://empressofdirt.blogspot.com/2006/07/virtual-garden- tour-round- up.html.

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

“Virtual tours and virtual labs are something that is becoming more and more necessary at the University of Florida as we are delivering many courses via distance education,” said Sandra Wilson of the university’s Department of Environmental Horticulture. “I teach courses to students located throughout the state. The virtual garden tour brings the gardens to them, as it is impossible for most students to travel here.”