Spring Anemones in Florence, Italy.

A couple of days after the official beginning of spring, I took an early train from Milan to Florence. The Saturday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy, but the sky was clear and the sun was warm in the old Tuscan town. Streets were crowded, and resounded with the hails and laughs of groups of young Italian and foreign students experiencing art and monuments, budget hotels and wild nights. I skipped works of arts and solemn churches to join garden lovers exploring the gardens that surround Florence.

The idea to “profittare di tutte le piacevolezze – luce, aria, spazio, panorama – che la campagna offre…”(1) inspired the development of the ville di campagna, country villas, in the hillsides around Florence since the end of the Middle Ages. Source of nourishment and refuge from plagues, country villas became places designated for the cultural and spiritual enrichment, marks of prestige and power later evolved in magnificent and sophisticated worlds. At their apogee, between the 16th and 17th century, architecture, geometry, hydraulic and botany were carefully combined to create unique and refined gardens. That are still there.

I saw bare trees and clipped hedges that created perspectives and geometric backgrounds for pavilions, fountains, urns, stone seats and statues. Monumental stairs or simple gravelled paths connected different themed areas, led to thick groves, or to terraces, embroidered with buxus parterres, overlooking roofs, domes and olive trees. In the cold nights, huge vases of lemons and other citrus trees were sheltered in elegant greenhouses, or, when cultivated against walls, protected with roofings. Precious collections of citrus trees adorned the finest Tuscan gardens during the 16th and 17th century. The beautiful plants were cultivated for their aesthetical qualities and mythological references, but also for cooking and for medical purposes. They were planted in special flowerpots designed to exalt their shapes, or against walls, on trellis, in small groves and in flowerbeds surrounded by flowers. The giardino di fiori, the garden of flowers, was arranged in geometric flowerbeds with elaborated decorations of coloured and perfumed flowers, especially bulbous plants. Hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, buttercups, iris and anemones were arranged in triangular, square, and circular flowerbeds, bordered with hedges, terracotta, stones or other mineral materials. They offered an intense, but short, blooming season, at its best in springtime.
In today’s gardens, I saw vases with collections of botanical tulips, muscari and daffodils, perfumed blue hyacinths with crocus and unknown green stalks in small square flowerbeds, rows of white hyacinths in long rectangular flowerbeds bordered with trimmed buxus, and circles of violets in circular flowerbeds.

But what surprised me more, however, were the green lawns dotted with spontaneous anemones that bloom freely under the sun.

 “...era un prato di minutissima erba e verde tanto che quasi nera parea, dipinto tutto forse di mille varietà di fiori, chiuso dintorno di verdissimi e vivi aranci e di cedri..."(2)

 "... was a lawn of the finest grass and so green that it seemed almost black, all painted perhaps of a thousand varieties of flowers, and closed around by lush green and vivid orange trees and cedars ..."

(1) Ovidio Guaita, Le Ville di Firenze, p. 12: “to take advantage of all amenities – light, air, space, view  - that the country offers…” from Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria. 
(2) Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decameron (1350-1353). Terza Giornata, Introduzione.

Photos:
TravelinGarden, Florence March 2013.

Further reading:
Ovidio Guaita, Le Ville di Firenze, Newton & Compton Editori, Roma, 1996.