Garden-hunting in foreign countries is a delightful pastime. Not only new aspects of beauty are revealed, but the friendship between garden lovers is a by-product of the experience.
Pursuit Of Horticulture
Indeed, the pursuit of horticulture enveloped in an architectural setting combines the arts and the crafts to the best advantage while providing a pleasant spirit of adventure.
Before starting this engaging quest, nothing is more important than defining our objectives. First, we must be able to describe what is and what is not a garden.
According to the word’s basic meaning, a garden must be contained within an enclosure.
It is primarily devoted to the culture of trees, shrubs, and plants but is usually intended to give visitors a glimpse of beauty and a sense of tranquility.
A garden is not a nursery where plants are grown in rows for practical reasons or a plantation of wildflowers spreading over a rocky hillside or a so-called “herbaceous border.”
Nothing is easier than to be led astray by a well-meaning guide who literally or figuratively does not understand your language.
Half of my only day at Fez was wasted when I asked a distinguished Sheik, directly descended from the Prophet, to show me his vaunted garden outside the city walls.
It proved to be only a few rows of bare peach trees. On one of them was perched a wooden platform.
Perfect Pleasure Gardens
In springtime, musicians delighted their listeners who sat cross-legged on rugs spread on the grass below, as depicted in many a Persian miniature.
Nowhere in Europe have pleasure gardens attained greater perfection than during the Baroque period in Italy and in Spain.
The great 17th-century architects included both the mansion and its environment in the same plan.
Secret Gardens
Parks formally planted with tree-shaded avenues often ornamented with fountains and statuary were usually open to the public. In contrast, the so-called “secret gardens” were reserved for the owner and his friends.
Often, next to the dwelling, an intervening space spread like a gaily-colored carpet with a box outlining spiral patterns containing masses of brilliant flowers.
The private gardens served as open-air living rooms all year round.
Sequestered by evergreen hedges or high walls with box-edged beds, clipped shrubs cast shadows, and various architectural features permanently accentuated the design.
Even in winter, the garden remained enjoyable. Everywhere, the Baroque movement created a breezy atmosphere.
Bernini’s statues are clad in fluttering draperies, fountains sparkle in the sunshine and grottoes lie hidden in deep shade.
Chiaro-oscuro added a pleasing sense of mystery. As Francis Bacon stated, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness.”
Preserved Italian Gardens
Among the most charming Italian gardens, several designed and ornamented by Baroque architects and sculptors are still preserved almost in their original condition.
Widely as they seem to differ, all derive inspiration from the love of rhythm and harmonious discord prevalent in the new era.
To Vignola, the great exponent of Baroque architecture is due the layout of two exceptionally beautiful pleasures.
The Villa Lante at Bagnaia, divided into a series of platforms, starts from a large parterre at the entrance overlooked by spacious twin casinos.
Above their silvery, stone walls arise groves of plane trees, fountains, and murmuring cascades with a long vista terminated by a charming pavilion.
By moonlight, when nightingales are singing and shadows half veil the scene, it has a mysterious, dreamlike beauty.
At Caprarola, in the Villa Farnese, again Vignola expressed his genius for creating formal pleasure grounds.
The central vista rising above a series of terraces ends in an airy pavilion standing amidst a charming secret garden.
Equine Fountains And Box-Edged Flower Beds
The equine fountains and box-edged flower beds are guarded by strange, pagan gods perched at intervals on the enclosing parapet.
Compared to these masterpieces, lesser achievements seem rather insignificant, but there are many others, large and small, and of infinite variety.
The little garden at the Villa Torregiani near Lucca, with its grotto, surprise waterworks, and gay flower beds, has charm.
At the other end of the scale are the pleasure grounds above the immense Boboli Palace in Florence.
The Villa Dona dalle Rose
The Villa Dona dalle Rose at Valsanzibio near Padua has interesting features and merits a visit.
Since the rise and fall of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, their influence has never been wholly lost.
Generalife, the Summer residence of the last Moorish kings, contains a series of well-planted courtyards and retains an indescribable charm.
Double rows of cypresses shade the walks, and living waters throw up jets of spray to refresh the vegetation.
Gardens Of The Alcazar In Seville
On a much larger scale, the gardens of the Alcazar in Seville, designed gradually for successive Spanish kings beginning with Pedro the Cruel, were carried out in Moorish style with few modifications.
During the Baroque Period, the vast royal pleasure grounds at Aranjuez continued to show Moorish influence in the seventeenth century.
The beautiful park sequestrates open spaces in the woodland furnished like patios with flowering shrubs, stone benches, and central fountains.
Interpretation Of Baroque Art
Later Philip V, the first Bourbon king, employed French architects to lay out the extensive grounds embellished with fountains, statuary, and a parterre of flowers near his palace at La Granja.
This interpretation of Baroque art is magnificent but unsympathetic. More in keeping with our day and generation are patios enclosed within and without the house.
At Cordova, adjacent to the Viano mansion, is a succession of enclosures large and small, sunny and shady, ending in a parterre full of flowers accented by oleanders with a fountain surrounded by stone benches.
Oranges and lemons are trained against the whitewashed walls opening with windows to admit the air.
Inner courtyards with vines, flowers, and fountains — each a law unto itself — can be discovered everywhere, but are especially inviting at Seville.
Characteristics Of Portuguese Gardens
Several characteristic features differentiate Portuguese gardens; polychrome tiles often bedeck garden walls, parapets, fountains, canals, and reservoirs.
Flowers bloom all year round. Near Lisbon at Bemfica, the Quinta da Fronteira embraces a remarkable example of local Baroque design at its best beneath the palace windows.
The most striking adornment is a tile picture above a pool; it extends the enclosure length and is hundreds of feet long.
It represents the 12 equestrian knights in armor mentioned in the Lusiads as having chivalrously entered an English tournament to vindicate the reputation of Queen Philippa’s maids of honor.
On another side of the palace is a series of fascinating little private gardens with a terrace leading from the drawing room to a miniature chapel.
The ornamentation of these enclosures is typically Baroque, and there is a grotto elaborately decorated in the shell-work characteristic of this period.
Time has only mellowed the beauty of all these ancient dwellings — both plants and people as lichens etch patterns on their crumbling stone walls.
But, alas, their former owners can no longer enliven the scene, pace the green alleys, sit by the fountains, or rejoice in the flowers.
Princes in embroidered costumes, cardinals in crimson robes, and hoop-skirted ladies, with their attendant cavaliers, have disappeared forever.
44659 by Rose Standish Nichols