The pointed grey leaves of a thick olive tree grove rose to a similar grey sky during the Saturday afternoon visit at the friaries’ garden on the island of La Giudecca.
In the shade of the Basilica del Redentore seven-something hundreds years of history were summarized in a few minutes while the small group of visitors silently swarmed through the extensive fields. Here an elderly Capuchin monk cultivates violet artichokes and other vegetables with sporadic help of younger monks, forced to leave their studies and meditations to prune vines and pick up kiwi and jujube.
A long line of faultless cypresses, introduced as ornamental plant just in the 16th Century, protects these cultivations from cold winter winds and escorts you towards the end of the garden, to a low wall overlooking the lagoon.
Just a few trees, besides cypress, stand such particular conditions of thin soil and salt water as taxus baccata and celtis australis, magnolias, for example, does not survive for a long time.
The next day, a warm, sunny Saturday, I joined the group in time to see, behind a ruined palace and a tall hedge, the roof of a once famous library. This quiet, isolated building called loggia preserved a famous collection with rare literature and history books. The simple green lawn with fruit trees could have disappointed me, as there was not much more to see, if I had not realized that what seemed to be an ordinary plantation was the result of a huge work to recover the garden from a fatal decline. I put back my notebook and I enjoyed the sun listening to the lectures laying my eyes around: ripen pomegranates weighted down the branches of the trees, a lonely statue stood proud in front of severe cypresses, a crimson ribbon of the last pelargonium flowers overhung holding vases.
I would not have found pelargonium five hundreds years ago but citrus fruits, myrtus and roses or aromatic combinations of majorana, dianthus and basilicus in terra cotta vases decorated with festoon and garlands and painted in bright red, green, blue or white to show up the flowers.
Later, after a quick pasta and confused information, I reached by vaporetto - steam-boat -the last garden, two stops before the isle of Murano, one stop before the Isle of San Michele, Venice’ cemetery.
Quiet streets led to the main door of this garden nested in the Sestiere di Cannareggio, and today owned by a religious institution. It was not its glamorous past that struck my imagination but the pink-reddish, brick wall that surrounds the garden, with intriguing windows opening on the North lagoon, that enchanted me.
An ordinary life runs close to the San Marco square: fast motorboats, old houses with washing hanging out the windows and televisions switched on at the highest volume, and not so far away the melancholy cemetery of San Michele.
Venetian gardeners never neglected boundaries walls: they had to protect but not to segregate the property. They were inspired by oriental gardens, decorated with bold battlements, with windows to let the world in.
Two snow-white angels stood at the top of two thin white columns on the wall, they smile looking at the garden ignoring those steam-boats full of tourists that tirelessly sail to and from the isle of Murano.
I left Venice late in the afternoon, loving these gardens snatched from the sea and from the oblivion, loving a town I always dislike and loving the dark clouds that, coming from east, closed again the sky.
Gardens visited in Venice – Italy on October 2005:
Giardini dei Palazzi Gradenigo e Cappello - Santa Croce Rio Marin;
In the shade of the Basilica del Redentore seven-something hundreds years of history were summarized in a few minutes while the small group of visitors silently swarmed through the extensive fields. Here an elderly Capuchin monk cultivates violet artichokes and other vegetables with sporadic help of younger monks, forced to leave their studies and meditations to prune vines and pick up kiwi and jujube.
A long line of faultless cypresses, introduced as ornamental plant just in the 16th Century, protects these cultivations from cold winter winds and escorts you towards the end of the garden, to a low wall overlooking the lagoon.
Just a few trees, besides cypress, stand such particular conditions of thin soil and salt water as taxus baccata and celtis australis, magnolias, for example, does not survive for a long time.
The next day, a warm, sunny Saturday, I joined the group in time to see, behind a ruined palace and a tall hedge, the roof of a once famous library. This quiet, isolated building called loggia preserved a famous collection with rare literature and history books. The simple green lawn with fruit trees could have disappointed me, as there was not much more to see, if I had not realized that what seemed to be an ordinary plantation was the result of a huge work to recover the garden from a fatal decline. I put back my notebook and I enjoyed the sun listening to the lectures laying my eyes around: ripen pomegranates weighted down the branches of the trees, a lonely statue stood proud in front of severe cypresses, a crimson ribbon of the last pelargonium flowers overhung holding vases.
I would not have found pelargonium five hundreds years ago but citrus fruits, myrtus and roses or aromatic combinations of majorana, dianthus and basilicus in terra cotta vases decorated with festoon and garlands and painted in bright red, green, blue or white to show up the flowers.
Later, after a quick pasta and confused information, I reached by vaporetto - steam-boat -the last garden, two stops before the isle of Murano, one stop before the Isle of San Michele, Venice’ cemetery.
Quiet streets led to the main door of this garden nested in the Sestiere di Cannareggio, and today owned by a religious institution. It was not its glamorous past that struck my imagination but the pink-reddish, brick wall that surrounds the garden, with intriguing windows opening on the North lagoon, that enchanted me.
An ordinary life runs close to the San Marco square: fast motorboats, old houses with washing hanging out the windows and televisions switched on at the highest volume, and not so far away the melancholy cemetery of San Michele.
Venetian gardeners never neglected boundaries walls: they had to protect but not to segregate the property. They were inspired by oriental gardens, decorated with bold battlements, with windows to let the world in.
Two snow-white angels stood at the top of two thin white columns on the wall, they smile looking at the garden ignoring those steam-boats full of tourists that tirelessly sail to and from the isle of Murano.
I left Venice late in the afternoon, loving these gardens snatched from the sea and from the oblivion, loving a town I always dislike and loving the dark clouds that, coming from east, closed again the sky.
Gardens visited in Venice – Italy on October 2005:
Giardini dei Palazzi Gradenigo e Cappello - Santa Croce Rio Marin;
Chiostro e Orto del Convento del Redentore – Giudecca; Giardino dei Palazzi Vendramin e Foscarini- Dorsoduro Carmini; Giardino di Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo – Cannaregio, Madonna dell’Orto.
Photos:
Travel in a garden.
Further Readings:
Il Giardino Veneziano. La storia, l’architettura, la botanica. Mariapia Cunico, Marsilio, 1989.
Further Readings:
Il Giardino Veneziano. La storia, l’architettura, la botanica. Mariapia Cunico, Marsilio, 1989.
