Michael McCoy is one of Australia’s leading landscape designers and horticulturists. Fuelled by a unique horticultural and botanical education, unmatched communication skills and an insatiable curiosity, Michael is a published author, regular Gardening Australia columnist, and host of the ABC TV’s Dream Gardens.

Michael has led international garden tours of distinction all over the world for more than twenty years. Travelling masterclasses are designed for those really hungry for further design and planting knowledge.

“I’ve been the incredibly privileged recipient of garden knowledge and nurturing from my gardening idols in the past.  It’s now time to take others along with me on this wonderfully steep learning curve.”

Lucie Willan was until recently the Head Gardener at Sparoza, the historic headquarters of the Mediterranean Garden Society in Paiania, Greece. Sparoza is one of the most important water-wise gardens in the Mediterranean world - created from a bare hillside in the mid-1960s and now an internationally recognised centre for drought-tolerant and native-plant gardening. In tending it, Lucie has placed herself at the very centre of contemporary Greek horticulture and the ideas that are driving it.

Her role at Sparoza has given her an unrivalled network of relationships with the garden makers, plantsmen and designers who have shaped the new wave of Greek garden-making that forms the backbone of this tour. From Lefteris Dariotis to Jennifer Gay, Katerina Georgi to the remarkable private collectors and island gardeners we will visit, these are gardens and people Lucie knows intimately. Her knowledge of the plants, the climate and the culture that connects them is simply without equal.

"Gardening in Greece - in this extraordinary light, with these plants and against this depth of history - is an endlessly rewarding education. To share Sparoza, and the remarkable community of gardens and garden-makers that has grown up around it, is something I look forward to enormously."