7 June 2004

La Foce is one of my favourite gardens. Like agapanthus and Venice, the sight of it fills me with a warm joy.

Returning there last Thursday was pure pleasure. It’s something about the way that this informal-formal garden interacts with the austere Val D’Orcia, something about the way that the different levels are integrated so intelligently, and something about the fact that the high box hedges, so perfectly clipped, divide the spaces into tiny rooms which manage never to be claustrophobic.

The secret, I believe, is the fact that it’s neither an Italian garden nor an English one. The idea of Iris Cutting-Origo (an Anglo-American brought up in Florence) and the design of Cecil Ross Pinsent (an Englishman plunged into Tuscany’s glittering inter-War Anglo intellectualcircles almost by chance) this is the fond English idea of an Italian garden, a perfect blend of contrary sensibilities.

The wisteria was over and the perovskia not yet out (though the green fronds were peeking over their tight box surrounds). But the roses were splendid and the air was full of philadelphus. I had the pleasure of getting to know a relation of this sweet-smelling plant, Carpenteria californica. Then and there, even the most horticulturally-minded of my companions wasn’t prepared to swear to the identity of this plant, with its long, glowing dark-green foliage and scented white flowers with their jutting yellow stamens. But carpenteria it definitely was, and my various catalogues tell me that it is evergreen, hardy and sun-loving. I must find a place for it in my garden.

The other stops on my whistle-stop school trip to lesser-known Tuscan gardens covered a wide spectrum. Pietro Porcinaia’s 1960s-wacky design for the Pinocchio park in Collodi I find frankly sad. For a start, the place is lugubrious with its crowding Quercus ilex. Which is not to say that I object to holm oak on principle… on the contrary: it’s just that in such abundance, pressing down on what is ostensibly a theme park for small children, I find it oppressive. And that’s another problem: this garden gives the impression of having been designed exclusively to impress 1960s adults – and preferably adults with a solid grounding in garden design – rather than for children. There are, of course, lovely touches: I’m not saying the Porcinaia was without talent, and his details are charming. But there’s little to capture the average child’s imagination in this dark jungle. I remember, years ago taking Clara and the small children of friends there. The only real spark of excitement came at the pirate ship (was this by Porcinaia? I have lost my brochure) where there are real ships’ wheels and real little boats to paddle about in and lots of water in the right place. The elusive, artsy nature of the rest of the place left them cold.

The baroque garden of the Villa Garzoni, also in Collodi, on the other hand, is charming, and has grown into the restoration that left it somewhat bare looking a couple of years ago.

But all of these I already knew. The sculpture park at the Fattoria di Celle, on the other hand, was somewhere that I had made a couple of fruitless attempts to get into (calling and hoping to visit the same day, rather than giving the required advanced warning). Art patron Giuliano Gori’s idea of inviting artists to create site-specific works for his splendid early 19th-century romantic park

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