Italy’s Glorious Gardens Summer is the perfect season to explore Italy’s most beautiful gardens. From isolated island escapes to secluded secret gardens, Italy offers an impressive collection of vibrant and verdant landscapes to explore. Here we unearth some of Italy’s most meticulously manicured gardens and soak up the heady scents of summer. Judith Wade founder of Grandi Giardini Italiani – the country’s largest network of gardens – shares her personal favourites with Envy Italy
Barberini Garden, Castel Gandolfo, near Rome The pope’s summer palace, Castel Gandolfo, has only recently been opened to garden lovers. The gardens are on the south-west shore of Lake Albano and built over the ruins of an ancient Roman villa, Albanum Domitiani. It has a grand belvedere and a perfectly pruned Italian parterre. This is one of the very few gardens you can visit and admire in the pouring rain (a rare event south of Rome), thanks to a Roman cryptoporticus, or covered passageway. There is a magnificent magnolia collection and a model farm that grows produce for the pope’s table. Villa Reale di Marlia, Lucca, Tuscany The Royal Garden of Marlia, whose first owner was Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, Princess Elisa Baciocchi, has recently undergone a major restoration. A luxurious green lawn, the teatro di verzura, laid in the 17th-century, rolls from the Renaissance villa down to a picturesque lake. This has been restored, with terracotta statues in their original places. Trees, shrubs, camellias and boxwood hedge walks have been cut back to the original size and shape designed by
Jacques Gréber in 1924. The colourful Spanish garden is particularly impressive, with fountains fed by a network of irrigation channels. Castello Visconti, Grazzano Visconti, Emilia Romagna This majestic 14th-century castle is still home to the Visconti family and is where film director Luchino Visconti spent his childhood. Avenues weave in and out of a wooded area where cypresses, pines and holm oaks have grown into their full splendour. The Italian parterre is colourful and neat, dotted with statues on pedestals. Roses and hydrangeas add colour and variety in summer, and there is a children’s play cottage. The nearby village of Grazzano Visconti was created in neo-medieval style by the duke’s grandfather. Villa della Pergola, Alassio, Liguria Saved from developers by the Ricci family a few years ago, with the help of Italian landscape architect Paolo Pejrone, this garden has been brought back to life. Abandoned for years, it now has a newly planted collection of agapanthus, long pergolas of wisteria and
Ville Pontificie di Castel Gandolfo by Dario Fusaro, Archivio Grandi Giardini Italiani
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