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| Mediterranean Landscape Design | Italian Home Improvement and Landscaping Ideas |
Italian Style Garden Ideas |
The pleasure garden was perfected in the countryside of ancient Rome. Here, emperors and dignitaries would entertain guests and seek respite from the duties of post. The orchard formed a part of the villa garden as resource for large banquet feasts. But the Roman pleasure garden was a carefully landscaped area, designed to enhance and take best advantage of picturesque views.
The Roman garden was a grand landscape divided into sections. A part of the garden would be terraced with fountains built into the hillside steps, while another might hold a high waterfall cascading toward a large pool. As the great aqueduct engineers of the ancient world, the Romans prized fresh running water. Not just one, but no less than several water features were situated amongst the garden greenery.
Marble was in many cases the material of choice in the architecture of the fountain. The luxury stone was also used for constructing patios, vine-draped pergolas, sculpted statues, and an array of other garden features. Hidden arbors, stone benches, and columned walkways lent beauty of detail. Roman frescoes dating to the 4th century depict gardens arbors and pergolas wrapped in rose vines. Many centuries later, the classical structures still feature widely in Italian garden design.
Like their Roman ancestors, Renaissance gardeners had a love of symmetry and picturesque views. The Renaissance garden was formal in layout, simple in appearance, and meticulous in design. Garden sections were divided by hedged viale, and entrances flanked by potted lemon trees.
| Mediterranean Garden Design and Home Improvement | Mediterranean Home Improvement and Landscape Ideas, | Italian Garden Landscape |
Dramatic foil to surrounding foliage, the cypress tree is a quintessential element of the Italian garden, both Roman and Renaissance. Carried to the Italian peninsula from the lands of Syria and Persia by the Etruscans, the cypress tree, like a stone carved cultural relic, can survive a good two thousand years or more. Cypress trees remain among the most treasured of the Mediterranean. For ages, Italian gardeners have enjoyed grooming these evergreen beauties into architectural walls and arches.
The beauty of the Italian garden is found in the humble - and the not so humble - potted plant. The courtyards of Rome are even today lined with citrus topiaries standing in impressive terracotta pots, called tondo. Fluted pedestal urns in classical shapes are complimented by the gray agave. And the view is only enhanced by the ideally placed classic sculpture, stone wall, or cascading fountain.
The Tuscan style garden characteristically uses wood and terracotta brick. Red-brick columns are topped with unmilled wood beams to support crawling plant vines. In the kitchen garden of the Tuscan farmhouse villa, herbs and vegetables are planted. Garden beds might be enclosed by walls made of wooden planks.
Color plays a vital role in the Italian country garden. There is the red geranium, the pink rose, the purple bougainvillea, the crimson heliotrope, but as well the silver-gray and green of a good many Mediterranean plants. Color is also given by the tomato and pumpkin hues of a stucco wall, the muted blue of a painted wooden door, or the soft yellow of stone. The Romans often enjoyed color in painted frescoes on garden walls.
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