GENERAL LINES FOR THE PLANTING

The planting of this garden is that of a precious garden, open and exposed to the sun over most of its surface. The fundamental criterion for the planting is that of historical characterization.

The intention is to evoke gardening of the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The solutions proposed are as follows:

Plantings that are older than this period, but which would have continued to be used on the basis of the long-standing gardening tradition which in the sixteenth century became ever more popular (for instance, flowering meadows, new selections of carnations, violas and narcissi).
Plantings characteristic of the period, that is to say associations of flowering types with aromatic plants (rose-myrtle, rosemary-carnation etc.), and plantings with bi-coloured themes (white-red, with variants of white-pink, pink-red, yellow-white, white-blue with the variant white-violet)
Plantings which include species introduced in the sixteenth century, easy to recognize. Amongst these are the first plants coming from the New World (cannas, sunflowers, tobacco, marvel of Peru, marigolds, prickly pears), which by the middle of the century were already widespread in Italian gardens. There are also some plants from the Middle East, whose presence and diffusion in the second half of the sixteenth century is ascertained (imperial fritillary, marine iris, the first botanical tulips, lilac, philadelphus and viburnum, new species and varieties of jasmine and citrus).
To mark the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, some introductions from the beginning of that century have been included, such as the Dracaena draco L., the Yucca gloriosa, the Scilla peruviana L.
Emphasis was given to plants which in literature and rhetoric of sixteenth-century gardening were defined as “coronarie”, that is to say suitable for the production of chaplets and garlands, and, by extension, to the creation of bunches of flowers to place in vases. The “piante coronarie” were perennial herbaceous plants, with ornamental and scented flowers, aromatic plants (herbaceous, and small- and medium-sized shrubs). On the other hand the use of bulbs, which were very characteristic of sixteenth-century plantings, was deliberately limited.

There are very ancient white and blue irises, and narcissi identified in mediaeval pictures, and the very first tulips and crown imperial introduced into Italy between the fifth and sixth decades of the sixteenth century, but not the seventeenth-century tulips, nor those other bulbous plants which became so important later.

These criteria are based on the study of the sources, the principal amongst which are the manuscript treatises on agriculture by Girolamo Gatteschi of Fiorenzuola (ca. 1552), Agostino del Riccio (ca. 1589) and Giovanvittorio Soderini (ca. 1590), and those published by Carlo Stefano (1535-1570); the illustrated herbaria of Pitero Michiel (before 1577), of Ulisse Aldovrandi (middle of sixteenth century up to 1605) and of Joachim Camerarius (ca. 1588), the botanical treatises of Leonhardt Fuchs (1545), of Rempert Dodoneus (156-1583), medical material of Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1554-1576) and the florilegia of Basilio Besler (1613), of Emanuel Sweertius (1612) and of Crispin van den Passe (1614).

The Hortus Floridus of C. van den Passe is the latest work referred to, bearing in mind that many of the plants included in it were part of the subsequent horticultural period, which will be emphasized in other parts of the garden in a second stage of the project.

The limits of this planting are imposed principally by the availability of ancient botanical species and varieties. These have often disappeared completely or are not in commerce, and therefore the horticultural pool to be drawn on today is limited with respect of that which really existed at the time in question.

The criteria of choice are therefore based on actual availability, on the inclusion of forms near those of the botanical species in case of doubt, or of similar forms which can be found on the market.

In some cases, such as for anemones and ranunculus, the present cultivars follow criteria which are the opposite of the historical ones, but which can be easily rectified. The garden which is richest in particular plants, and also the first to be restored, is the central one which develops around the Fountain of Neptune.

Surrounded by low hedges of Myrtus communis var. tarantina in the strips, the garden is divided into areas in grass - punctuated with daisies, violets, crocuses, anemones - and trapezoidal compartments delimited by hedges of myrtus communis. Inside these grow old-fashioned roses, aromatic plants, as well as species in fashion in the sixteenth century, with particular emphasis on the “piante coronarie”, used for the making of baskets and garlands.

The system of paths makes it possible to walk along the principal path which surrounds fountain, but also among the flowering compartments to be able to get a closer view.