What is Carex Tours
We are a small well-traveled team who love planning garden visits around the world – and making sure you get to see them.
Maybe it’s a week of naturalistic borders in the English countryside. Or two weeks following Japan’s ancient contemplative garden designs.
What drives us is finding gardens worth crossing the ocean for.
That means private estates. Conversations with the actual designers or garden owners. The kind of access you can’t just Google. Details that would take you months to organize, and probably cost twice as much.
Meet the Team
Jacqueline Lancaster
Booking Manager
You’ll probably know Jacqueline’s voice before you know her face. She’s the person behind every phone call, email, and ‘quick question before I book’ message, and she genuinely loves chatting with our Carexplorers.
“I grew up in South Africa, in a house surrounded by four different gardens. My mom and grandmother loved gardening. They would drag me to garden centers for hours. I wasn’t the most helpful little gardener, but I did love hiding behind trees and bushes, feeling totally at peace.
Later, when I lived in England, I thought those wild, beautiful gardens just happened naturally. Now I see just how much planning goes into them.”
Working for Carex has really made me appreciate the art and care behind every garden.
Lisa O’Donnell
Trip Designer
Lisa is Carex’s trip designer, and our most experienced traveler on the team. She’s spent years designing itineraries for niche travel groups, but garden tours, as she’ll tell you, are in a category of their own.
“Here, I get to work with professionals in the garden industry whose incredible networks grant us access to private gardens most people never get to see. The way they speak about gardens reminds me of an artist describing their artwork. The same passion, the same depth. It’s genuinely inspiring.
At home, it’s my husband who is keeping our little green corner alive. I’m the one who adds pieces from our travels to it.”
Kat Stokes
Booking ops
Every detail of your trip: from travel documents to food preferences, has Kat’s fingerprints on it.
“I grew up in Australia where my parents grew fruits, vegetables, herbs, and gorgeous perennials. My official role in the family garden was watering the plants whenever they were away. I guess you could say I’m a professional plant waterer, and I love it. There’s nothing better than sitting outside, just taking it all in. That feeling follows me wherever I travel.
I love to travel, and always try to spend time outdoors when going somewhere new. In 2016, I went to Tokyo, a city that’s just a full-on sensory overload. But right in the heart of it, you step into a garden and suddenly everything shifts. It’s tranquil, quiet. People just sit outside and breathe.
I hope you find your version of that moment on our tours.”
Nicola Noviello
Brand Manager
“My relationship with gardens started early, raiding my Dad’s vegetable patch for strawberries, gooseberries, and runner beans straight from the vine.”
That curiosity later on grew into a more scientific exploration.
“I have a strong ecological background, so seeing how a garden functions as an ecosystem is what fascinates me most. Every landscape shapes what can grow and how people garden, and seeing those variations across different parts of the world is endlessly fascinating.”
Nicola’s most vivid garden memory is closer to home.
“English summers in my hometown of Colchester – stretched out in the shadow of the Norman keep in Castle Park, with hundreds of bumblebees furiously buzzing through the flowers.”
And at Carex, it’s the people that keep her going.
“Take Chris, the tour leader for many of our trips: he could talk about gardens underwater with a mouth full of marbles. And it’s infectious!”
How did it all start?
Carex started as a one-woman show in 2015. Carolyn Mullet, a garden designer with over 30 years of experience, had a simple idea: why not just take people to the gardens she loved? The rest, as they say, is history.
In 2024, Carolyn decided it was time to pass the trowel. As we, at Leatherback Travel, are in the business of building travel communities around niche brands, it was simply a natural fit.
We’ve been growing it ever since, and we’re only getting started.
The gardens are waiting. We hope you’ll join us!