Open gardens day in Florence: Cortili e Giardini Aperti a Firenze

As my faithful readers will remember, I am an enthusiast for the formal gardens of Tuscany, especially those of the larger villas of Tuscany. I therefore always look forward to Open gardens day in Florence (Cortili e Giardini Aperti a Firenze) which in 2022, takes place on 22 May, when the private gardens of Florence are open to the public - see the list here. In 2018, I took the opportunity to visit some gardens in the Oltrarno which I either hadn't seen before at all or only a long time ago.

The one I want to describe in some detail is the Giardino San Francesco di Paola which extends upwards and away from the former home of Harry Brewster, "the last of the cosmopolites of Florence". Brewster, a descendent of William Brewster of the Mayflower, was also the grandson, on his mother's side, of the German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrandt, whose studio occupied part of the former Minimite convent of San Francesco di Paola. The convent is located at the foot of Bellosguardo, the beautiful hill that dominates the Oltrarno. It was an evocative experience for me to walk up Via Villani to the circular Piazza San Francesco di Paola. Although there are 19 C and modern buildings on two sides of the piazza, the old church and the wall and gate of the convent are still there, just as described by Brewster. The main structure was long ago divided up into apartments and, alas, the building is looking much the worse for wear. Indeed, so are some of the remaining Hildebrandt sculptures standing in the loggia at the back of the villa.

The loggia of the Villa of San Francesco di Paola - much in need of some restoration

However, the garden is beautifully kept up, as is the hay shed (fienile) which Brewster converted into a neat, strangely English-looking, cottage covered in roses and surrounded by a small lawn, where he himself lived in frugal simplicity writing his books. One continues up a series of irregular steps to Brewster's beloved belvedere from which there is a beautiful view of Florence, which because of its lower altitude, is almost more beautiful than the vista from the top of Bellosguardo.

View of Florence from the belvedere in the Giardino San Francesco di Paola

Next I walked to entrance of the Giardini Torrigiani not far from the Pitti palace. I have often passed the fine iron gates of these gardens - little did I know that there are 17 acres of gardens hidden behind the walls in the centre of the Oltrarno. In fact, the Torrigiani gardens are the largest private gardens within city limits in all Europe.

A view of a small part of the Torrigiani Gardens, In Florence

The Torrigiani gardens were originally planted by the founder of the Italian Botanical Society, the oldest such society, and the garden still has an uncommonly wide variety of trees, especially exotic species, in keeping with its 19 C “English Landscape” style. The gardens were designed at the height of the Romantic movement in the early 19 C, forming an idyllic oasis of green around the original 16 C villa. The garden hosts rare tree species, wide English-style lawns, herb and vegetables gardens, sculpted lions, a beautifully restored greenhouse and remains of the city walls built under Cosimo I in 1544. The layout of the garden is also profoundly symbolic and I strongly advise visiting it with a good Tuscan garden guide book in hand.

The astronomical tower in the Torrigiani gardens

Last but not least, I visited that exquisite jewel of a garden, the Giardino Corsi Annalena, nearby on via Romana. This garden is located on land formerly owned by the monastery of San Vincenzo which was founded in around 1441 by Countess Anna Elena (Annalena) Malatesta. During the long struggle for supremacy between Florence and Sienna, the area was dominated by the fortifications created by Cosimo I de’ Medici, including an underground passage that until this day connects the Boboli, Corsi and Torrigiani gardens. Following the destruction of the fortifications in 1571, the area was left abandoned for many years. In 1790, the Marquis Tommaso Corsi purchased the land, then known as the "Moors’ Garden", and the architect Giuseppe Manetti designed what can be considered the first English garden in Florence. It was completed during the years 1801 to 1810. If you have the chance to visit this beautiful garden, please don't miss it.

The Giardino Corsi Annalena in Florence

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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Florentine villas and gardens: American and English expatriates in Tuscany

Villa Gamberaia , located i on the outskirts of Settignano above Florence was a favorite destination among the Florentine villas and gardens for American and English expatriates in Tuscany during the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

The parterre of Villa Gamberaia

Villa Gamberaia, celebrated for its unique gardens and splendid views over the city of Florence and the Arno Valley, has long inspired American and British landscape designers, from Charles Platt and Cecil Pinsent to Ellen Biddle Shipman. In the early 1900s, it was the favorite meeting place of Bernard and Mary Berenson, Janet Ross, Vernon Lee and Arthur Acton, who gathered for tea, dinners on the terrace and talks on art and literature with their hostess, the Romanian princess Jeanne Ghyka and her American companion, artist Florence Blood, two very talented women who created the magnificent parterre d’eau.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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"In a Tuscan garden" - who was the author of this book?

Attentive readers of my blog posts will long ago have realised that I'm a garden nut - not just an enthusiast for classic Tuscan gardens but also for gardening in and of itself. This week I was lucky enough to add to my Tuscan gardens library a wonderful volume with a beautiful art deco cover, published in 1902. The author was an anonymous English lady who, at the time of writing her book (1901), had spend 15 years cultivating the garden of her villa near Florence. The book, In a Tuscan Garden, is a quite charming description of her adventures in setting up and maintaining the garden that was obviously an important part of her life in Tuscany. She has much to say on the character not only of the Tuscan seasons, soil and garden plants, but also the character of Tuscan gardeners!

The villa forming the frontispiece of In a Tuscan Garden by Georgina S. Grahame

In her unpublished recollections, Annie Grahame reveals the author to have been her mother, Mrs Georgina S. Grahame. The John Lane archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas also contains correspondence between John Lane, who published the book under the Bodley Head imprint, and Georgina Grahame.

Who was Georgina S. Grahame? She was born in 1838, the daughter of George Bell (1795-1864) and Ann Robertson (b. 1800) and was an aunt of Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows. She married Robert Vetch Grahame in 1857 when she was 19 years old and he was 33. Robert Vetch Grahame, born in 1824, was the son of Thomas Grahame (1793 - 1881) and Agnes Vetch (1801 - 1878) who married in 1822. Robert Vetch Grahame (1824 - 1890) was a merchant who spent much of his working life abroad in Manila and later lived in London. Georgina mentions having been in the Philippines. The couple had two children, Annie Grahame, born in 1859 and died in 1937, and Thomas George Grahame, born in 1861 and died in 1922, both born in the Philippines. Annie was the same age as her cousin Kenneth Grahame and a sympathetic friend of his. Robert Vetch Grahame retired in 1879 while resident in Edinburgh.

The Grahame family was Scottish in origin but Robert Vetch Grahame and his family lived at Draycott Lodge in Fulham, West London, which he owned from 1870 until 1879. (In November 1881, the house passed to the pre-Raphaelite artist, William Holman Hunt.) Kenneth Grahame lived with them for some time between leaving school and taking up employment at the Bank of England in 1879. Annie recalled visits from Kenneth Grahame after they established themselves Italy and there was an interesting exchange of letters between them.

Georgina Grahame refers to the "breakup" of their household, presumably upon her husband's retirement, and the purchase of a smaller place, probably not in London, a few years before her husband took out the lease on Villino Landau, an old farmhouse located on Via Bolognese about 3 km from the historic centre of Florence, on the hills of Fiesole in Tuscany. This seems to have taken place in about 1885 and it is unclear how often her husband accompanied her there. In her book she refers to her son Thomas as "The Junior Partner" and her husband as "The Absentee".

The Villino was an annex to a famous Renaissance villa known under various names over the centuries and which currently belongs to the University of Paris, under the name Villa Finaly. It was Allied Headquarters during the liberation of Florence. The golden age of the villa, then known as Villa Montughi, was the period as 1427-1816, especially after 1586 when it was owned by the Corsi family. From 1854 until 1858, it was the country seat of the last English Minister to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Constantine Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby, who sold it to James de Rothschild shortly before his death in 1863. Rothschild had little interest in the property and sold it two years later to Baron Horace de Landau who was the owner at the time of the lease of the farmhouse to Georgina Grahame's husband, Robert. On the death of the Baron in 1903, his niece, Jenny Ellenberger, inherited his fortune, including the villa, and it was this change in ownership that brought to an end the residence of the Grahames at the Villino. Annie Grahame recorded that Jenny Ellenberger and her cousin and husband, Hugo Finaly, were "too high and mighty to tolerate neighbours"!

In 1909, Georgina published, also anonymously, a second book, Under Petraia, With Some Saunterings which was reviewed as far away as in New Zealand (New Zealand Herald 1908) in large part because of the popularity of her first book among gardeners world-wide. In the second book, she describes their search for a new home in Tuscany after the change of ownership of Villino Landau forced them to give up their lease. This latter volume is scarcer than In a Tuscan Garden. I am still searching for a copy to learn more about this unjustly neglected Victorian authoress and member of the amazingly talented Anglo-American population of Tuscany in the late 19th century.

More about the gardens of the Tuscan villas.

Tuscan villas and their gardens.

Italian Renaissance villas and their gardens.

Cecil Pinsent and the villa gardens of Tuscany.

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Author: Anna Maria Baldini

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The Gardens of the Tuscan villas

Gardens and gardening without utilitarian purpose seem to be defining characteristics of civilised life. From the end of the 19 C well into the early 20 C, the gardens of the Tuscan villas were among the most important attractions for visitors to Tuscany. Although apparently less fashionable now, perhaps because visits to Tuscany are much shorter and more frenetic than formerly, at least one formal garden should be on your itinerary.

The formal garden of Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany

Although you will easily find un giardino all'inglese anywhere in Tuscany, to avoid any false expectations, it's important to realise that an italianate garden is never a flower garden in the way many famous English gardens are. The gardens of Tuscan villas are in essence an extension of the architecture of the villa and are therefore symmetrical with extensive use of topiary and statuary. A beautiful and distant vista beyond the garden is important, and, if supplies permit, water can be incorporated, either as ponds or water works of various kinds.

A fairly complete bibliography of guide books to Tuscan gardens is provided here.

Links to descriptions and pictures of many Tuscan gardens may be found here.

One of the most talented Edwardian garden designers was Cecil Pinsent. Among the gardens he worked on were Bernard Berenson's Villa I Tatti at Fiesole, Charles Augustus Strong's Villa Le Balze , Villa Capponi and, most famous of all, Iris Origo's Villa La Foce.

Click here for information on staying at Villa Gamberaia, one of the most famous villas in Tuscany.

Some other Tuscan villa gardens easily accessible to tourists include:

Badia a Coltibuono and its reconstructed monastic garden.
Castello Brolio, essentially a 19 C folly with matching garden.
Villa Vignamaggio, a magnificent Renaissance villa on the road from Greve in Chianti to Lamole.
Villa Gamberaia, one of the finest examples of a Tuscan villa hanging garden in Tuscany.
Tuscan gardens and Tuscan culture.

Last but not least, please realise that 99% of the villas offered as vacation rentals are farmhouses, not villas. Read "When is a Tuscan villa not a Tuscan villa?" and my article on Tuscan villas to rent.


Author: Anna Maria Baldini

Places to stay in Chianti - villas, farmhouses, B&B rooms

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