Italian garden

From Gardening Wiki

Italian Flower Gardens

Of the many kinds of gardens that are classed by national style rather than the plants grown, the Italian is the acme of formality; nothing is unordered. It is the Renaissance perfection of the ancient Roman idea of a garden that not only was symmetry itself but was a part of a larger scheme of symmetry as represented by the villa using the word in its old sense of an estate rather than merely a house. The elaborate design bears a distinct relation to the house, yet is quite com- plete in itself. There are terraces which may be of monumental proportions if the opportunity presents itself and much topiary work, ornamen- tal stone and statuary. Pools and running water also figure prominently in it.

A garden sufficiently Italian to be so called is perfectly feasible on a small place, if it conforms to the architecture of the house and there is a sufficient slope to permit of three terraces. Mod- ification may be quite extreme. Flower beds of set design and neatly edged, with gravel walks, are more important to the plan than lawn spaces. Trees should close it in on three sides, that iso- lation may bring out its individuality. Clipped hedges may be made to take the place of stone balustrades. The red cedar is a fair substitute for cypress, while very good reproductions of antique garden furnishings are comparatively inexpensive. With these two materials, in fact, a short path could be converted into what it would be permis- sible in the intimacy of home to name an Italian garden.

Few will care to carry consistency beyond this compromise ; for the more one studies Italian gar- dens the more one inclines to the view that to the average American gardener some part is of greater value than the whole. Perhaps it is only a group of cypresses in the Villa Albani, Rome, that sug- gests how to plant some red cedars standing out against the sky. Or the plan of the Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, is just the thing from which to adapt a parterre design, or the view up the terraces to the palace at Villa d'Este, Tivoli, the solution of a sloping rear-yard problem, or the Hill Walk of the Boboli Gardens, Florence, the pattern of a smaller scheme with a modest gateway. None, in the making of gardens, need fear to look too high; perhaps the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as pictorially imagined, may furnish the very key to the planting of a cottage yard that is so hilly as to require a series of retaining walls quite close together.