Fertile imagination

Italy, like England, is one of the great gardening nations of Europe and was hugely influential in the evolution of ideas about green spaces arranged for pleasure and contemplation. In 14th-century Tuscany, discussions on the interplay of art and nature blossomed into a full-scale gardening revolution by the period of the Renaissance – turning the enclosed, inward-looking gardens of the Middle Ages outward to face the world in grand, formal arrangements. Gardens grew beyond gardens to become sculpture galleries, or living catalogues of plant life (the world’s first botanic gardens sprouted in Pisa and Padua), and Italian creativity left the rest of Europe with a lot to imitate, and counteract, for the next 500 years.

Today, along with Tuscany and Lazio, one of Italy’s key areas for garden lovers is the northern lakes. A vast range of plants thrive in the lakeside microclimates, where the air is always moist and the temperatures moderate – despite the northerly latitude and the snow-clad Alps rising dramatically in the near distance. The dark, deep lakes absorb lots of summer heat then slowly release it through the colder months, so a Mediterranean climate reigns over the water’s edge while an Alpine one holds