We present geometric realizations of horospherical two-orbit varieties, by showing that their blow-up along the unique closed invariant orbit is the zero locus of a general section of a homogeneous vector bundle over some auxiliary variety. As an application, we compute the cohomology ring of the
G
2
G_2
-variety, including its quantum version. We also consider the
S
p
i
n
7
Spin_7
-variety, which deserves a different treatment.