The upper building at Villa Farnese provides great example of an Italian renaissance garden. Note the order, symmetry, repetition, all in relation to the house. Viterbo, Italy, 1570's CE.
When order and stability came to Europe after the middle ages, landowners sought to express their wealth through their landscapes - the result is the Italian renaissance garden. With inspiration from ancient Roman and Islamic gardens, landscape designers laid out gardens using axes, geometry, and symmetry.
Look for a fully integrated house and garden and accentuated perspective. Terraces tame steep slopes, elaborate stone carvings and water features add history. Grottoes and bosquets add contrasting naturalistic elements. This style influenced the French formal garden style that followed. Edith Wharton's 1904 book Italian Villas and Their Gardens fueled a resurgence in the style.
Check out the posts below for other examples of gardens inspired by the Italian renaissance style.
This kitchen garden has style. Villa La Pietra is a reminder that ornamental gardens can be productive, and vegetable gardens can be ornamental. Simple criss-crossing paths are laid with crushed stone, a central fountain features a mythical mer-boy, and at one end sits a covered structure to...
At some point we all have the urge to tear out our gardens and start over again. After enough changes occur, the desire might be to restore a garden to its original design. Though many houses and gardens were created to be one integrated unit, that intention can get lost over time. Here is the story of one such restoration...
With the US elections over, some Americans have joked about moving abroad. In the early 1900’s, quite a few Americans did just that and Italy was a favorite destination. Among these expats were Hortense Mitchell and Arthur Acton who settled outside of Florence to restore an old villa and its gardens. Where would you go? What kind of garden would you create?
Gardens are continually evolving. Sometimes it is about fine-tuning, other times, a complete redesign is needed to reflect a new passion. The Giardino Bardini in Florence, Italy is a great example. What started as a medieval cloister garden became an Italian renaissance landscape and then an Anglo-Chinese garden...
There is nothing like a good garden gate to welcome us into an outdoor space. Garden gates tell us where to enter the landscape – mark the separation between the outer and inner worlds of the garden - and provide a sort of invitation. Here are a few of my favorite. What's your favorite garden gate?
"The traveler returning from Italy, full of the ineffable Italian garden-magic, knows vaguely that the enchantment exists; that he has been under its spell, and that it is more potent, more enduring, more intoxicating to every sense..." Edith Wharton, 1904.
No garden conjures the spirit of Halloween better than Vicino Orsini’s Sacro Bosco. This garden has many references to death and the afterlife. At the same time, the space is full of fantasy ...
