What can one say about an Italian garden which has not been said before in poetry, prose, music, in song – from the roses of Paestum to the newest hybridization of orchids, which is being done in a range of glasshouses on a hill beyond Bellosguardo and envy one of the seven deadly sins!
Yet, I am glad to repeat the beautiful old truths and shall begin by saying that the characteristic Italian garden is not a flower garden.
As in all southern countries, the two chief desiderata are water and shade: allees and fountains, with balustrades and statues as decoration.
Your flowering plants are in pots – even the lemon trees are potted here in Florence as they will not survive the cold but retire under the shelter of “Lemon houses” for the Winter.
Sturdier Azaleas
It is a mystery to me why my azaleas are sturdier, but the fact remains. Azaleas are one of the standbys of the more formal gardens in the spring and have become “de rigueur” for the opening of the festival of the Maggio Musicale, with the big foyer of the communal theater banked with them.
Wisteria and roses, both of which grow for the mere love of growing, are everywhere at that fortunate season, but there still are not very many of us who go to the trouble of planting tulips in quantity.
Bulbs are a problem anyway, as they will not survive the hardness of earth baked to real “terra cotta” under a merciless Summer sun, and have to be taken up and planted again in the fall.
Ease In Growing
But the ease with which they grow in this same blessed Tuscan earth – the astounding, fabulous, breath-taking ease – is to which I have never become accustomed, even after 30 years. Mellower is stronger than weeds.
During my 10 years in my own country during the war, I learned that, in less favored climates, such is not always the case. So we plant paper-white narcissus in the furrows of the farm under the olive trees and flower theme for Christmas, and not long after, the little wild purple hyacinths will follow.
Like the crocus in the mountains, which become sheets of palest lavender under a pale spring sky, like the exquisite small wild cyclamen, in wooded places, they deal with their affairs and multiply endlessly, as do the violets.
Anemones Planted In September
Meanwhile, in the walled garden, the anemones planted in September will have appeared by the end of December in a mild year. And then a few brave camellias at the end of the terrace and, in spots which just suit their fancy, a few of the many Iris reticulata that I planted — very shy of blooming.
The yellow jasmine, Jasminum nudiflorum, golden cascades in January; the intense purple accent of the Judas tree; the bright pink of the flowering almond and cherry will have gone; the forsythia and the lilac will have had a burst of splendor so brief that it scarcely seems to have lasted overnight.
Then will come forget-me-nots and the Florentine iris, of which one sees precious few despite the name, then jasmine, later than the climbing roses, but by mid-June, most of this wealth will have melted like fairy gold.
Mixed Borders
However, I, being first and foremost a flower gardener, a dirt gardener, will have met these varied beauties with some others:
- Schizanthus
- Nemesia
- Pansies
- Viscaria
- Linaria
- Aquilegia (which is not happy here but can be coaxed)
- Camassia (which has finally and surprisingly taken hold)
- Aubrieta
- Mignonette
- Wallflower
This last, another enchanting creature that grows wild:
- Rosemary
- Salvia
- Lavender
- Clematis
I struggled for years to grow perennials and finally compromised with myself on a mixed border.
Italy Is Happiest With Shrubs and Annuals
If your perennials do not burn to death in the summer, they will rot under the winter rain. I have abandoned delphinium, but my larkspur is 4’ feet high.
It has been fun to see what could be done for the time when the faithful roses and geraniums were the only current fare.
One of my moral necessities is in stock, but it is soon over, blooming in the early season of greatest wealth; peonies are early too, though my favorites, the single Chinese, are a little later than the others.
Sweet Peas
The sweet peas are beautiful while they last, but antirrhinum is a standby that will march into any gap; sweet william does well, and so do the darling, small annual pinks; hemerocallis and the tall Iris ochroleuca both stay in the ground – a marvel of marvels – and flourish and have to be divided as do my barbata iris.
One of my pride is my Iris kaempferi. It will not live in the hard and alkaline Tuscan earth, but I have made deep and wide cement boxes stink in the ground for it.
And there, with the requisite soil and water, it thrives, one of my few dears which have survived the war, as have my rhododendrons for which I adopted the same system placing them in the farm under a high wall facing north.
Summer Heat
At any rate, the summer heat brings us certain treasures unknown to more temperate zones. It is curious how many of these flowers are white and intensely fragrant:
- Jasmines, climbing and shrubby
- The moon-flower, Calonyction aculeatum (Ipomoea bona-nox), whose opening is a miracle like the motion of a butterfly’s wings and which lives in serene beauty for a single night
- Great waxen magnolias, with a scent so heavy that you cannot bring them into the house, but that means the very ecstasy of warm moonlight and, alas, the departure of the nightingales, for these birds are creatures of the Italian Spring only, not tolerating the hot weather and continuing on their way northward after a sojourn which is always too brief
- Gardenias, which must stand in the shade in their pots, which are tremendously floriferous, and which at a given minute suddenly will cease to bloom —really for the only time in the year as we force them in the greenhouse all Winter long;
- Nicotiana, blessed be, continuing and continuing and flooding the garden by the pool with perfume the whole night. These are real Italian beings, like the hardy and often ugly geraniums.
For myself, I grow all the petunias, new and old, in pots, in the beds, for cutting, and in the boxes along the dining room terrace, which always has, in addition, a border of potted plants in bloom.
Two years ago I used cleome for a while which was lovely against the box hedges and the walls, but last year, for some unknown reason, my gardener let it all fail.
Intermediate Season-Summer
I have tried various things for the most difficult of all intermediate seasons — late summer.
- Heliotrope, which I adore, is capricious, good one year and poor the next.
- Salpiglossis condescends, so to speak.
- Anchusa
- Cynoglossum do well
- Browallia is fairly good and rather better.
- Torenia is another of my favorites
- Penstemon, with blossoms rather like smaller foxgloves, including the brown dots, really has established itself.
- Canterbury bells are over very soon.
- Gypsophila, including the double pink kind, goes bravely on; the extremely attractive, tall, large scabiosa, charming at last, though I hold no brief for double flowers, does very well.
But the most soul-satisfying of all the latecomers is the marvel of Peru — Mirabilis jalapa. Even the dreaded drought will not discourage it, which I discovered one summer when I had a garden if it could be called so, sun-scorched and bare, on the edge of the fabulous beauty of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Sometimes it will last until a rare and late frost cuts it down, still gay and fragrant and afternoon-opening, hence my childhood’s name of four o’clock for it.
Autumn Season
But by then, we have moved into Autumn, and, despite occasional bright and windy days, once the joy and color of the wine-making are finished, Autumn is a dreary season with us in the garden as elsewhere, saturated with fog and damp.
Roses — there always are some roses — but the turn of the year is the moment of rapture, and then one can begin again. So one should take the first flower that one sees as a symbol for the next 365 days. It would be a good religion.
44659 by Leolyn Everett Spelman