Boboli Gardens

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One of the finest examples of gardens dating from the Renaissance period in Italy is the Boboli Gardens in Florence. This extraordinary garden was built in the mid-16th century (1550-1580) for Cosimo de Medici.

The gardens are laid out in a formal style with a strong central axis, cross axes which intersect at right angles, and highly maintained hedges (each one laser straight across the top). There are magnificent views across Florence and to the decorative facade of the Romanesque church of San Miniato al Monte.

The gardens include an amphitheatre, which was built to stage pageants and even mock wars and is reputedly the site of the first staged opera. The area could seat 5000 people. The amphitheatre was built where stone was quarried for the building of the Pitti Palace, the Medici’s home.

Other important features are the orangery (an orangery is a building where frost tender plants are housed through the winter), a moated garden with L’Isolotto (the Little Island) with the Oceanus Fountain by Alfonso Parigi, a Rococo-style pavilion where the newly introduced beverages of coffee and chocolate were drunk (it is still a coffee house but now open to the public), and La Grotta Grande, a Mannerist-style folly which houses famous statues by Michelangelo and Vincenzo de’ Rossi.

For Don two of the highlights of this garden were the Pleached Laurel Walk (about 200 metres long) and a fountain of moustached gargoyles (actually an ingenious bird trap).There are other fountains that aren’t what they seem including some designed as a joke to squirt you unexpectedly with water as you passed by or over a concealed fountain.

The entire garden, which was like a small town for one family, is enclosed by a wall. There were fish in the lakes, animals in the woods, and vegetable and herb gardens which supplied the table and the pharmacy. The garden was opened to the public in 1766.

Around 200 people were employed in the Medici’s time to maintain the garden and the Medici’s extravagant life style. The gardeners moved huge tubs of citrus into the orangery each winter. Another task was to bring snow from nearby mountains to a cool storage area where food was kept fresh.

Lessons for Australia

The countryside around the Boboli Gardens is dotted with groves of Italian cypress or pencil pines (Cupressus sempervirens ‘Stricta’) and fields of olive trees (Olea europaea). Although pencil pines are used in Australian gardens, often a matching pair on either side of the front gate, they are never seen in the Australian landscape as they are in Italy. In Italy they form natural groups which look like dark green spears in the hillsides.

The European olive seen through Italy and the Mediterranean, is also a tree which would grow well in most parts of Australia (for example Perth and Adelaide). The grey colour of its leaves work well in the Tuscan light and also would look good under the Australian light.

Another element apparent in this and other important gardens in Europe is the use of muted colours (terracottas, pinks and fawns), particularly in the gravel used as the paving material throughout the garden. The Australian equivalent would be a Nepean River gravel. These colours never intrude too strongly but serve to link the various garden elements.

Garden features

Features of the garden are ancient sculptures and decorations acquired by the Medici family. Some of the amazing relics in the garden are Roman statues dating back more than a thousand years (some are around 1800 years old). There is also a large bath which was the bath for the public of Rome built by the Roman Emperor Titis 1900 years ago. From further afield is an obelisk that dates from the reign of Ramses II of Egypt. It is 3000 years old and has been stood on four little turtles which symbolise the slow moving solidarity of the Medici empire.

Some of the sculptures commissioned for the garden were crafted by Michelangelo (famous as the sculptor of the statue David and for his painting of the Sistine Chapel in Rome). Michelangelo is also reputed to have worked on the some of the walls around the garden.

Australian Examples

Jonathan Garner designed garden, Sydney, NSW

Designer Jonathan Garner used geometry as a unifying theme in this Sydney garden, and added a sense of fun as well. The pool and lawn area has an Italian influence, with a formal geometric design and a pool beautifully done in sandstone. The bronze statues here and throughout the garden are by Lismore artist, David Mackay Harrison.

The rose beds are separated from the rest of the garden by a conifer hedge (X Cupressocyparis leylandii ‘Leighton Green’) and bordered in Japanese box (Buxus microphylla var. japonica). The potager garden also relies on geometry to work. The garden beds are set out in a geometric pattern and then filled in with a mixture of herbs, vegetables and some flowering plants. When the vegetables are harvested the basic structure of the garden remains, ready for the next crop. Other features of this area include a herb seat planted at the back with lavender and underneath with lemon thyme, and an espaliered apple tree which makes excellent use of available space.

Cloudehill, Olinda, Vic

Cloudehill is at Olinda in the Dandenongs, about an hour’s drive from Melbourne. Owner Jeremy Francis has combined modern, cutting edge ideas with the best of the old fashioned gardening ideas, and an extraordinary use of colour. Axes of symmetry run right through this garden, making it a classic example of the sort of thing we saw at Boboli.

Features of the garden include magnificent herbaceous perennial borders, a green theatre in the style of old Italian gardens, and a new experimental part of the garden where Jeremy has used commedia dell’arte figures by Lazlo Biro to create a really bold element and a wonderful focal point. Commedia dell’arte was a stylised form of popular comedy developed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. The figures have a connection with gardening that goes right back to the 1600s. At that time many of the gardens in northern Italy actually had green theatres, where commedia dell’arte troupes played.

Arcadia garden, NSW

This Italian-style garden in northwestern Sydney is complete with buildings inspired by the villas of the great architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Palladio used three main elements in his work that are still relevant today: dramatic exterior motifs, economical materials and internal harmony and balance. The house at Arcadia is flanked by a guesthouse and shed in perfect symmetrical balance, similar to Venetian villas and their adjoining farm buildings called “barchessas”. The geometry and proportion of the architecture is complemented by clipped box hedges (Buxus microphylla), topiarised plants and the simple green and white colour scheme of the garden. The only flowering plants are white agapanthus (Agapanthus praecox). The garden is furnished with classical artefacts from France and England as well as garden tables, chairs, planters and fountains produced by Circa Studios under the name ‘Yardware’.

Further information

For information on garden styles from all around the world, visit the extensive archives section of the Burke’s Backyard website.

Cloudehill is at 89 Olinda-Monbulk Road (corner Woolrich Road), Olinda, Victoria, 3788. Open 7 days except in June, July and August when it is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Closed Christmas Day and Good Friday. Phone (03) 9751 1009.

The Arcadia garden features:
Yardware: classical artefacts from France and England as well as garden tables, chairs, planters, fountains and urns. Stockists Australia-wide.

The Design Establishment
CDA Centre
513 South Dowling St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Phone: (02) 8353 3888

Jonathan Garner
Puddleton Cottage Gardens
Phone: 0417 460 704