Italian Gardens : A History

To many of us, the great gardens of Italy seem like paradise on earth. Butow much do we know of their history, and the people who created them? Inhis ravishing new book, illustrated with contemporary paintings, drawingsnd prints as well as photographs of the gardens today, Helena Attlee tellsheir story. She starts with Petrarch - still looking to medieval chroniclesor advice on how and when to plant - and goes on to the Renaissance andhose first gardens to emerge from architects' plans. Then she describes thereat gardens of the Medici; the first botanic gardens; the weird Manneristardens and their grottoes followed by the Baroque splendour of Isola Belland the Villa Aldobrandini; the Neoclassical and Picturesque gardens of theighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and how, in the twentieth century,xpatriates with money to lavish on their villas and gardens brought newelights.