Bella Tuscany (13 page)

Instinctively, my preferences are toward blowsy, abundant, spilling flower beds with everything about to bolt across the grass. I like blue delphinium and foxgloves tall enough to arc and sway in the slightest breeze. There should be plenty of yellow lilies looking back at the sun, and dark gardenia bushes for the evenings, the pure white flowers anticipating the moon. Larkspur, coral bells, love-in-a-mist, strawberry borders, and as many pink roses as possible.

Humphrey wrote five books, plus fifty-seven Red Books, his designs for gardens with transparent overlays showing the after over the before. Even the title of his first book,
Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening,
tells me a lot about him. Casual, low-key, inviting. Observations, sketches, and hints, after all, offer a lot of leeway—such a different slant from my grandfather's approach to life, he who went to
the school of hard knocks,
called all my boyfriends “little two-by-fours,” and thought my writing
with your head in the clouds
was close to a criminal act. Humphrey's English garden style gradually influenced the more rigidly conceived Italian garden design. I'm searching for a blend at Bramasole, along with our own idiosyncratic preferences.

With only a little over an acre of our five devoted to the frivolity of flowers, I know Humphrey would not devote a Red Book to my garden. But I'll take him along as I plan.

 

During the winter in San Francisco, I began to read about the evolution of the Italian garden. I knew that in ancient times, Pliny wrote about fanciful creatures cut from boxwood, and names spelled out by vines and flowers. His lost garden is thought to be near Città di Castello, just a few miles from Bramasole. During suppers in Pliny's garden, light courses were floated in artificial birds and miniature ships on the surface of a stone pool. As you sat down, a spray of water shot up. His concept of gardens blended sweetly into his version of happiness, a philosophy of
otium,
life spent in elegant, intellectual freedom.

Propped on pillows in bed while wind swirled the trees and scoured the windows with rain and salty mist, I read
Gardens of the Italian Villas
by Marella Agnelli, and
The Italian Renaissance Garden
by Claudia Lazzaro, trying to imagine the decision to build a garden with paths which could be flooded so your guests could drift through the garden in little boats. Some gardens had waterworks which could simulate rain or the wind howling. I was struck with the concept of the garden not only as a setting for the house and a place of pleasure but also a place of surprise and fun—fountains that unexpectedly sprayed you as you passed, and
il giardino segreto,
the secret garden within a garden. Who would not love the idea of a secret garden? I've planted a double circle of tall sunflowers on a high terrace, making a little round room. They're almost knee high. In July, the big flowers and leaves will almost hide the inner circle. I hope someone's children come to visit. As a child, I would have loved that space.
Scherzi d'acqua
or
giochi d'acqua,
water jokes, more than any other aspect of the historical garden, reveal a vast cultural space between us and them. They were a staple of Italian gardens. Rounding a bend, your step on a certain stone would set off a shower, suddenly drenching you. Search the literature; these water jokes were enjoyed and expected. No one went home in a huff over her stained blue silk. I don't know of anyone over ten who would like to be drenched on a tour of my garden. But I'm convinced by water; there must be water in the garden, an element of obvious joy, just as flowers are. Water is music and a place for birds to wash, water is movement and a cool spot for toads.

I take statues for granted in the old Italian gardens. They served ideological purposes, reflecting a philosophical stance or interest, such as theater or music, of the owner. But often, I now realize, they were for pure play, as in the grotto pool at the entrance to the Boboli Gardens in Florence, where three marble children swim and duck each other. As a child I loved the mirrored globe on a pedestal in my grandparents' yard. Looking in it, the oak tree above went wonky and my face distorted crazily. Silver shoots of sunlight reflected so brilliantly that I hoped a fire would start.

Of all the gardens I can think of at home, few are playful. I met a woman in Dayton who has bowling balls scattered around her long sloping garden. Otherwise planted with conventional bushes, the balls certainly surprise. “How did you start collecting bowling balls in the yard?” I asked her.

“I had one. It looked so pretty with the snow on it.” She paused, groping for a reason to state; I realized my mistake in urging her to pin down whimsy with some rational explanation. “Anyone can plant flowers,” she continued. Long wicked pause. “It takes a real gardener to have balls.”

The traditional urge for garden ornaments persists in Tuscany. Olive oil jars, topped with pots of geraniums, decorate country gardens. An iron fence around a house in Camucia is decorated with musical notes. At garden supply departments, statuary is easy to find—David (gross in terra-cotta), Flora, Venus, the four seasons, various nymphs, the Seven Dwarfs. In antique shops, I see sublime travertine fountains with Latin inscriptions and garden ornaments too valuable to be left outside.

The whimsy of the eternal Italian topiary craze, too, seems to come from a great distance. I imagine Ed on a ladder, snipping our ball-shaped topiaries into ships, dragons, the Pope, a deer complete with antlers. One Medici
palazzo
had boxwood in shapes of wolf, dog, ram, hare, elephant, boar, and other creatures. A house in Camucia has topiary squirrels at the entrance. A neighbor's topiary I finally decided is a peacock. Why not a Ferrari, a glass of wine, the “finger,” or a soccer goal?

While reading about the great old Italian gardens, mentally I wandered through the local gardens of my Cortona neighbors, who emulate on a modest scale many of the traditions of the grand historical gardens—paths of river pebbles; little or no lawn; pots, pots, pots for flowers and lemon trees arranged around the garden; aviaries; box or laurel hedges; and shady arbors for dining outdoors. I've never seen roses bloom the way they do in Tuscany. They tend to be planted along a fence or—oddly—just off to themselves in a row. Flower beds and rolling lawns hardly exist; they require what Tuscans instinctively conserve: water. A small garden may have fifty pots of various sizes as well as a
limonaia
for citrus, geraniums, and hydrangeas. Cortona's park starts with a shady area of benches and bordered flower beds around a playful fountain of nymphs entwined with sea creatures. Beyond that area, the park, called the Parterre, stretches a third of a mile along a wall with long views over Lago Trasimeno and the valley. A gesture toward a formal garden remains in the linden-lined walk which is broad enough for two carriages to pass, though now it is only walkers and joggers. While I haven't seen a hilltown park as lovely as Cortona's, many medieval towns have parks just outside the gates, respites for the citizens from the heated stones and cramped streets.

The Italian concept of severe geometric gardens contradicts all my innate preferences. At heart, theirs is an entirely different design aesthetic. Historically, flowers play a minor role compared to statues, patterns of walkways, fountains, hedges, pergolas, and pavilions.

The Italian garden, Ippolito Pindemonte wrote back in 1792, was “ruled more by sun and marble than by grass and shade.” Wandering in gardens here, I've felt their austerity, a forlorn quality to the squared-off compartments and the endless boxwood terraces. They seem anti-nature. But by slow osmosis, I've grown to like the architectural and conceptual sense of space, how often garden layout reproduces the proportions of the house, and the statues, stairways, and balustrades create the sense of outdoor rooms. This
is
the Mediterranean, where people live outside as much as in. In the large gardens, these strict arrangements of nature give way to orchards or woods, the last buffers between the house and wild nature, a fine idea that crosses time and architectural styles. The early garden writers refer to gardening as “third nature,” first nature being the natural wild, second nature being agricultural cultivation, and third being nature in sync with ideas of beauty and art.

Even though the gardens appear highly artificial to my eyes, trained by Southern lawns of dogwood, azalea, and camellia, and by casual, low-maintenance California gardens, on reflection, they make sense. Italy, until recently, has been utterly fragmented. The castle, walled village, or villa of necessity had an us-against-the-world stance. Gardens, of course, would be enclosed or controlled or designed to make one forget the danger or chaos just beyond the confines.

 

Over and over, I surrender to the Italian sense of beauty. How to bring the elements I've come to love into my own garden? I want Humphrey's fast and loose arrangements, his rustic sense of comfort and ease. Can I have those along with the Italian geometry and playfulness, those oxymorons that give such a sense of surprise?

Reading about gardens is instructive but frustrating. Photos do not convey depth, and perspective is too limited. Worse, I can't smell the layers of fragrance as my eye follows the paths, can't bend down to rub a furry leaf, or see how a willow in new leaf fractures the light. I was transported only partially by the glossy pages to the grandiose waterworks of the Villa d'Este. The delight and luxury of water spilling from the breasts of women, the mouths of dolphins, the simulated cascades and stepped, downhill courses—the pictures stilled and silenced the gush, splash, and trickle you must bend close to hear.

Two hours in the Roseto Botanico at Cavriglia are worth a whole winter of looking at books. June is an ideal time to see—to smell—the garden of Fondazione Carla Fineschi, the largest private rose garden in the world. I immediately start writing names of roses we like, regardless of the fact that nurseries in our area often don't sell roses with names so we may never find any of these. Every category of rose—Bourbon, Chinese, Damask, Tea, Ramblers, etc.—has its beds and every bush is fully labeled. Ed and I lose each other then meet. Out of the thousands of roses, we hope to identify the two pink ones that belong to the history of our house. We both spot the indecently fragrant Reine des Violettes—similar, but ours are more cupped, like a peony. Maybe the
nonna
who lived at Bramasole never knew the name, or maybe such an old country rose just doesn't make it into the bloodlines. Let's just call it Nonna's Rose. Finally, we wander, watching the gardeners clip the dead, watching other people swooning over the fragrances. Behind the garden a few roses are sold. We buy three called Sally Holmes to sprawl along the driveway, offering white clusters of flat roses among the lavender. I'm not drawn to white roses but why not have a few to catch the moonlight?

 

At Firenze Com'era (Florence as it was), one of my favorite museums for its tranquil convent setting and its lack of other visitors, I'm fascinated by the dozen paintings of Medici villas by the Flemish painter, Justus Utens. These half-moons (painted in 1599 for lunettes in a Medici villa at Artimino) depict bird's-eye views of the houses and gardens as they were originally, a rare glimpse at ideal garden layout of that time. Villa Pratolino shows an elaborate sequence of pools spilling downhill into each other. At Lambrogiana's garden, four grand squares, bordered by pergolas, are subdivided into four others, with square pools at the entrance to each big square. The walled courts of all these villas are oddly empty—perhaps a well, but otherwise lacking ornamentation. If I ever win the lottery, I'd like to create a garden on this scale. Ever since the enormous fun I had reading George Sitwell's (papa of the marvelous eccentric writers Osbert, Sacheverell, and Edith) ruminations on his gardens, which involved the creations of hills and lakes, and other ambitious manipulations of the landscape, I've been in awe of gardeners who think on this scale.

The remnant of the Medici Giardino dei Semplici (garden of simples: medicinal plants) is still open to the public in Florence. Since Cosimo the First had the idea for this garden in 1545, botanists have planted specimen ferns, palms, herbs, flowers, and shrubs, as well as studied healing properties of plants. It's a weedy spot behind imposing gates near San Marco. This morning, it's empty, except for a woman wheeling a baby, and a man with a stringy garden hose drowning plants. At his rate, it will take a month to water the garden, which may be why so much of it droops. I take away no ideas from the garden of simples but it is a shady walk out of the heat of Florence, a glimpse back into the awakening of gardening as a subject of study and importance.

The herb garden at San Pietro in Perugia had me taking notes immediately. The San Pietro complex now shares its deserted, pure courtyards, grounds, and austere monks' cells with a university agriculture department. Guidebooks to Umbria don't even mention this peaceful oasis, with its accompanying book (in Italian) explaining the intricate numerology and plant symbolism of the reconstructed medieval meditation garden, which adjoins a clearly laid-out garden of simples. I found that a sticky weed,
la parietaria,
which sprouts from every crannied wall at our house, has a past. In Latin, it is called
elxine,
and possesses the powers to expel stones from the urinary tract, heal wounds, and calm colic. Local people have told me it's a chief cause of spring allergy, as well. As I dig out its tenacious roots, I'll have more respect for its existence. A pink version of what I know as yellow oxalis in California is called
acetosella
. The low, spreading plant Beppe calls
morroncello,
is labeled
pimpinella
(
sanguisorba
in Latin), good for everything from plague to ulcers.
Santoreggia,
savory, which I thought of as an innocent addition to summer soups and salads, turns out to be a powerful aphrodisiac when mixed with honey and pepper. Even the wild melissa appears in new light: Its leaves produce gold dreams. Since I'm not sure I've ever seen gold light in a dream, I'd like to try this tea. How perfectly blue the flower of borage, a bright spot in a herb garden.