All language subtitles for BBC.Italian.Gardens.3of4.The.South.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org

'I have been travelling through Italy,
exploring the country's loveliest

'and most significant gardens, and the
ideas and history that shaped them.

'I've seen the astonishingly grand
gardens of Rome, made by cardinals

'vying for the papacy.'

That's enchanting.

'And discovered how the Renaissance made Florentine
gardens into harmonious ordered works of art.'

Down there you can see a line of trees,

along here you can see a line of trees,
along this access there's a line of trees.

'I'll also be visiting the playful
baroque gardens of the North.'

Oh. Dead end. You got me.

Now have your wicked way.

'But this week, I'm in the South, where the gardens
are mostly more informal, the planting more exotic,

'and I get a glimpse into the glamorous
hideaways of the rich and famous.'

Keep out, unless you're
invited you can't come in.

'I'll be discovering how an 18th century

'very English gardening movement
utterly transformed Italian gardens.'

Ah, that's just lovely.

'And luxuriate in what's undoubtedly
the most romantic garden ever made.'

And then up here on the bridge

you have one of the most stunning
views in any garden, ever.

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I'm basing myself in Naples for
this southern leg of my tour.

It's a city that is a splendid
tangle of anarchy, shabbiness

and real architectural magnificence.

Tourists have used Naples for
centuries as a centre for exploring

the area's classical history and the dramatic
landscape set on the glorious bay of Naples,

as well as the more rugged Amalfi
coast, just a little further south.

I hardly know this area of the country at all, but
I do know that many of the gardens of the region

are a radical contrast to most of the
others I've seen elsewhere in Italy.

Most people still think of Italian
gardens as all being formal,

symmetrical, straight lines
and, above all, greenness.

But actually, in the south, particularly
around Naples, that isn't the case.

There are an awful lot of gardens
that are romantic and soft,

and I want to see as many as I can and find out why
are these gardens different in this part of Italy.

The gardens I visited around Rome
and Florence were often exuberant

and playful, but nature was always seen as
something to be tamed and tightly controlled.

Here in the south, many gardens
are comfortable with a wilder

and more romantic vision
of the natural world,

matching the artistic freedom that
the area inspired and nurtured.

And reaching its sublimest expression

in the garden created and in that
the ruined medieval town of Ninfa.

There is, rather surprisingly, a strong
English persuasion at work here,

and these very southern gardens have roots in the
British landscape movement of the mid-18th century.

I'm starting my visits halfway between Rome
and Naples, in the province of Latina,

by visiting a contemporary garden that
wears its English influences proudly,

and which I have a slight personal link to.

Set around the ruins of a medieval castle,

Torrecchia belongs to the daughter
of Prince Carlo Caracciolo,

the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica.

There is absolutely none
of the sub-hotel formality

that can be the default position
for many houses of the very rich.

Everything is slightly shaggy and
gently overflowing with flower.

The form and geometry that we all associate with
Italian gardens has been replaced by a sense

of careless abandon, as though nature
could reclaim it all at any moment.

As someone who gardens in
England, I can immediately

see familiarities - the softness,
the lushness, the greenness.

But actually, as soon as
you start to look closely,

there are all kinds of things
that couldn't happen in England.

The quality of the light, for
example, plant associations.

Put all those elements together and what you
get is a garden that belongs to the place.

Torrecchia's very modern horticultural
informality is the creation

of an Italian, Lauro Marchetti, and the
British garden designer, Dan Pearson.

And today it's under the
guidance of Stuart Barfoot,

who was Dan's assistant and worked
for me in my garden 17 years ago.

This is the first time I've
seen him at all those years.

We have this idea that Italian
gardens are crisp and formal

and clipped. How do Italians feel in
terms of letting things get loose?

Some Italians would have a problem with this garden,
I think, and I have had, we have had guests come who

sort of look at the plants growing out of the cracks
in the paving, and they've literally pulled them away.

Rushing after them to stop them.
"Leave my garden alone."

I had a very apologetic
lady once who I stopped

and she said, "Oh, I thought
I was helping you."

Although the plants might appear to grow untrammelled,
self seeding themselves and spilling freely,

it's none the less a highly designed space.

What appears to be a jumble of flowers

actually follows a restrained and
carefully controlled colour palate.

A lot of people will use a
colour theme in a garden,

but to work most effectively you
need to use three dimensions,

and in a big garden like this, of course,
that can be done on a grand scale.

So in the foreground you can have mixed
whites, and you get your little white garden.

But then here, the Philadelphus
picks it up in the middle ground.

And right in the distance, climbing
up a stone wall, is a white rose,

so that white just bounces away through
the garden like an echo disappearing.

And it's very subtle but
actually quite powerful.

The southern Italian climate means that there
are combinations of plants that are familiar,

but which you would rarely get to
flower simultaneously in Britain,

such as these foxgloves,

aquilegias and tobacco plants.

When Stuart arrived, he encouraged them to
leave as much grass as possible to grow long,

just mowing paths where necessary.

And his latest addition to the
garden is a wild flower meadow.

We sort of blitz this every autumn and we cut
everything down, take it away, rotavate.

- So it's an annual meadow.
- It's an annual meadow, yeah, mainly corn chamomile,

cornflower and a few poppies.

Obviously, a bit of the garden like this will
only look at its best for what, three weeks?

A few weeks, yeah. But we've
got a luxury in that sense

because this space really wasn't
being used and I thought, you know,

let's do something that looks really amazing and it
doesn't matter if it looks amazing for only a few weeks.

- And how does this go down?
- People love it. Yeah.

- Do they? Oh, right, they don't think you're a barmy Englishman?
- No, most people love it, yeah.

Although Torrecchia was begun
in 1992, this informal

style of gardening first appeared
in southern Italy much earlier.

It goes back over 200 years, when
the Bourbon dynasty ruled over what

was then Italy's largest kingdom, stretching from
north of Naples right down to include Sicily.

This is Caserta.

It was begun in 1751 for Don
Carlos VIII, King of Naples,

with the explicit aim of being the biggest
and grandest garden in all Europe.

It's certainly enormous and very grand.

But it also contains one of the
first examples of a new style

that was to revolutionise
Italy's formal gardens.

By the time you've walked
through the palace,

it's so impressive that you're in a
state of submissive shock, really,

and then you come out into
the light and the landscape,

and everything is funnelled down to this
extraordinary vista, just narrowed down to a point.

And it's as though it takes your natural
impulse to look out and forces it in.

And of course that's all about power.
It's doing it because it can.

And it's just saying,
you know, "Be amazed".

Well, you can't be anything else.
It's amazing.

Whilst all your attention is focused towards the
cascade, three kilometres away at the far end,

to get down there and visit all the garden
is a walk of over eight kilometres.

So, I hire a bike to get around.

These high walls of trimmed trees
and hedges around the bosco,

or ornamental woodland, are a regular feature
in Italian gardens, but I never tire of them.

The view is so compelling and steers you on so much
that it's easy to overlook how wonderful the bosco is.

And it's that combination of
the clipped edge of the wood,

like a hedge, and then the trees spilling
over the top that is deeply satisfying.

It's a lovely thing, a bosco.

This is the epitome of high
Baroque and rococo design.

Dramatic, confident and elegant.

And with nature always
firmly under control.

Do you know, I'm feeling
quite excited about this.

When I came here, I'd seen pictures
and it looked very static.

It had got this power statement.

"Here I am, I can do this,
admire it, now push off."

It's not like that at all.

It unfolds, and it's progressive.

And as I'm cycling along there's
a sense of a narrative,

and I'm part of it.

I'm not excluded.

The scale of the garden
is simply breathtaking.

Just to bring the water into the canal and its
fountains, Caserta's architect, Luigi Vanvitelli,

blasted through six hillsides and
built a 33-kilometre-long aqueduct.

But this was a final flourish,
because Caserta was the last

palatial garden to be built
in Italy in the formal style.

It took 25 years to make, and by the time it was complete,
gardens across Europe were being changed forever.

The strange thing was that in 1786,

just really little more than 10 years
after the formal garden was finished,

it was out of date and a
new garden was started.

And this new garden was exotic and
absolutely the height of fashion,

and it was called the English Garden.

On a 50-acre plot, especially
bought for the purpose, is a garden

as different in style to its
predecessor as could be imagined.

It looks like nothing so much
as an English country park.

The whole style was based
around taking the elements

of the countryside and including
them as part of the garden.

This new style was based
on the landscape movement.

Rather than regulate nature in ordered ranks and
lines, it set out to absorb and replicate it.

It actually takes as much control and as
much skill to make things to look natural

as it does to make the garden look formal,

and one of the key things is
parkland, where you have large

trees with grass underneath. But, of
course, this is the baking south.

Grass doesn't grow easily, and the large trees are not
the ones you'd normally expect to see in England.

I mean, I can see a huge Cork Oak, I think it is,
and there are Cypresses, Stone Pines, palms.

None of the elements would you find in the
average English garden, but the general feel

is certainly true to the type.

This type was begun by William Kent 50 years
earlier and then made popular by Capability Brown,

and the new fashion transformed Britain's
gardens before spreading across the continent.

Ironically, this style of gardening
was based upon paintings

of imagined classical landscapes
and was known as the picturesque.

As a result, classical temples and fake ruins
became highly fashionable garden accessories.

To go down an overgrown path and come
across a fully blown temple is a surprise,

which is absolutely in the spirit of the
Picturesque style, which this garden is based on.

Whereas in a formal garden you see
everything literally for miles,

and if you're going to have a temple,
you put it on the top of a hill.

Whereas with the new style,
everything is a moving tableau.

It's to delight you and surprise you or even
horrify you, certainly to titivate you.

So to brush through the undergrowth
and come across a temple as though

it's being lying there for years
is exactly the required effect.

This English garden at Caserta is contemporary with
the New Romantic Movement that took the frisson

of raw nature and celebrated it as a reaction
to the industrialisation that was taking place.

In the process, the romantic
poets such as Wordsworth,

Keats and Shelley created
a new artistic language

that valued the imagination and emotions

as highly as the previous era had
held rationality and the intellect.

This is a nympheum,

and any self-respecting English garden by
the end of the 18th century had grottos

and places where hermits might stay, and they
were meant to evoke a response in the visitor.

And, in fact, this is where the Picturesque
moves into the Romantic period

where it's all about feelings
rather than about thoughts.

This carried on right
through the 19th century

and you'd have little places
where you could wander.

Inside this rocky, rather wild
place there is a statue...

Whoops! And a... Oh, look.

A complete... abandoned, lost
piece of classical world,

but this is not a ruin that
has evolved through time.

This has been manufactured to look ruined.

Look at these statues.

And what's a real shame is that the people that wander
through now do seem, particularly around Naples,

to have a desire to leave their mark,

and nobody's stopping people do it, and no-one
seems to clear it up. Maybe nobody minds.

The great discovery of the
Renaissance was classicism,

with its humanism and order.

But a couple of hundred years
later in the romantic garden,

classical civilisation is
depicted as picturesque ruins,

designed to deliciously thrill you
with a display of mortality and decay.

But not all the thrills
of the garden are solemn.

I like that because there you have a nymph washing
decorously, and from the front she's covering herself up.

But this is a peek at her bum and I like
the sense of 'what the butler saw',

that she doesn't know we're
here and we're spying on her.

The fashion for English landscape
gardens lasted in Italy

until the neo-Renaissance revival in Florence
at the beginning of the 20th century.

But the romantic influence remained particularly
strong here in the south of the country,

attracting artists, writers and musicians to
escape the restrictions of northern Europe.

And their influence in particular found
its way into the gardens of the region.

I'm now heading to the coast,

for Sorrento on the far
side of the Bay of Naples.

Today, it's a popular modern
resort, but it's ancient,

and has been drawing of visitors here from
all over the world for a very long time.

Since Roman times, people have been
building villas and houses in Sorrento

because it's a lovely place.
It's not hard to see why.

But it's also attracted
people from quite far afield.

People come from northern Europe to
this point because there's something

about the place that gives them creative
freedom, whether they're painters

or artists or whatever, and I think
it's because it's far enough south

that suddenly you're liberated from all the ties
of the north, and that applies to gardens, too.

People have come from far
afield to make gardens,

and the next garden I'm
visiting is just here.

And because the view is so important,

the garden is right up
there on the cliff top.

In the 18th century, which was the heyday of
the Grand Tour, Naples was the southernmost

point in Italy for the young and noblemen seeking
out the visible remains of Italy's classical past,

and eagerly taking on what
entertainment they could on the way.

A Napoleonic wall's put a
stop to that, but by the end

of the 19th century the area started
attracting wealthy foreigners again,

who not only visited, but also
began to make homes here.

This private garden is one such.

Although not open to the public, I'd
been allowed in to take a look.

- Ooh! - 'Yes?'
- Hello, it's Monty Don.

- 'Yes, the gate is open.'
- Whoops!

It is called Villa Il Tritone.

The 19th century villa was bought
in 1905 by William Waldorf Astor -

the American ambassador in Rome before becoming
a British citizen and eventually a viscount.

Astor enlarged the grounds and much of
the existing garden was laid out by him.

He loved the place and used it as a
very private retreat from public life.

A place where he could
truly relax and be free.

It's interesting that
this piece of the garden,

which is right by the house, so
you'd expect it to be formal

and an Italian way to balance
the architecture of the house.

It almost immediately gets fuzzy.

The plants are allowed to roam free
and seed themselves where they will,

and then towards the end of the boundaries of
this bit of the garden, it gets almost anarchic.

And I think that's the
key to the whole garden.

It sort of bursts the constraints of the
formal Italian garden, despite itself.

It can't help itself but be free.

Astor used Il Tritone's long
history to make his garden.

There had been a Roman villa on
this side, looking out across

the bay to Mount Versuvius and the town of
Pompeii on the other side of the water.

But in that spectacular view
laid the Venus de Milos.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying the
town of Pompeii on the other side of the bay,

the tsunami that followed the quake swept across
and knocked the villa straight into the sea.

Remains and artefacts from the villa
were recovered and Astor used them

when making his garden, but the result was
anything but conventionally classical.

The overriding impression you get in this garden
is of a greenness, a soft light coming through,

and in this central avenue you
have this tunnel of green.

Most avenues are open to the sky, but this one,
because it's closed over and with the Banksia

rose growing across the top, in fact
you just get glimpses of the light.

They're like skylights.

I like the fact they've used wood and
it's not some metal construction.

It's slightly wonky and
accidental and that looks lovely.

It's soft, and yet there are
avenues going out to other things.

There's an avenue going down there,
and at the end you go down to light

and the sea, and look down there, the way this green
path, which is just moss, and bright sea beyond it,

and it's designed in such a way as to
make it seem much bigger than it is.

These avenues radiate out simply
to make the most of the space.

In the early 1970s, the villa was bought by an
Italian businessman. Mariano Pane and his wife Rita.

Then just in her early twenties with small children,
Rita found herself the custodian of the garden,

although at the time, she wasn't fully
aware of its historical significance.

Luckily, I was so young when we
came that I was not intimidated

because otherwise, if I would have started
now, of course I would feel intimidated.

But as it grew slowly,

I really absorbed the story of this garden,
the past of this garden, the culture.

What's your philosophy,
in terms of gardening?

My philosophy first of all is freedom.

I think that at the end, you cannot fight against
nature and in the end nature will always win,

so I think you have to choose the
right plants for the right place.

The spontaneous plant, they're so beautiful.
You need to discover them.

They are not imposing themselves.

I like the idea of the romantic garden, the garden
of the poets, modern, the garden of the architects.

Well, you've certainly achieved
that, there's no doubt about it.

This is about as romantic
as a garden can get.

William Waldorf Astor had commissioned

the English garden designer Harold
Peter to create his garden,

and Peter build a wall, both
as a screen to create privacy

and simultaneously to intensify
the burrowed landscape.

I think this series of windows along the sea
edge of the garden are a stroke of genius,

because you might think that with
this dramatic and beautiful landscape

with the sea outside the
garden, you want to have

access to as much of it as possible,
but actually by blocking it out

and then revealing it in a carefully chosen series
of framed pictures, you make it more precious.

And at the same time it keeps out
the hurly-burly of the town below,

so you get the best of both worlds.

You get the landscape intensified and made more
precious, AND you get increased seclusion.

Il Tritone is a green, green place.

Even the paths are thick with
a peachy green fuzz of moss

and I couldn't resist slipping my shoes
off to tread their delicious coolness.

Ooh, it feels nice.

It's attractive to see people doing things.

I reckon the key to this garden is in
the way that it's an escape from life,

and think of who it was essentially
made by, William Waldorf Astor,

an ambassador in Rome, a rich American,

beset all the time by the
strangeness of the country,

by diplomacy, politics
and then money and art,

and what that money bought him was a way of
getting away from things when it got too much.

Too much sun, too much noise, too many
other people he didn't want to be with.

And with creating a green retreat
with windows out on to that world,

not only was it a kind of
barrier and insulating there,

but a beautiful one. A beautiful bubble.

In the early years of the 20th
century, the trickle of foreigners

buying homes here became a full flow,

as Europe's rail network
made the Amalfi Coast,

just south of the Bay of Naples,
a popular holiday destination.

These holiday-makers found
an area that was a very poor

with the only living to be had from the sea
or the ravishingly beautiful but harsh land.

The hillsides above the sea are still
cultivated in a thousand layered terraces -

growing vegetables and fruit, but
principally lemons, and the locals

proudly claim that the lemons of
Amalfi are the best in the world.

I made a detour to visit Giovanni Ciuffi,

who's been growing them here for 50 years.

As you walk into the groves, every
breath is zesty with lemon.

That smells so good.

Ooh, I just squirted myself in the face.

It's a...

It's a joy!

What makes them special?
What is it about them?

Lemon not round, but long.

So if I want to grow lemons at home
as good as yours, what is the secret?

You have to choose the
right plant from Amalfi,

- and give it love.
- Amalfi and love!

And love.

You come next year and he
prepare a plant for you.

That's a date.

The poverty of this region meant that
comparatively wealthy foreigners could buy

beautiful Italian estates for much less
than their northern European counterparts.

I'm on my way now to see one such place,
perched high up above the cliffs at Ravello.

Bought as a run-down farmhouse,
it was transformed into a famous,

but very private retreat for a
fascinatingly eclectic mix of celebrities.

You have to walk to get here. The
streets get narrower and narrower.

No swooshing up in your Bentley
and making a grand entrance.

But when you do get here,

the entrance itself is about
as grand as it could be.

It's rather intimidating, actually,
because it's like a castle.

The steps leading up, this great big door, the thick walls.
Now, all that's saying is, "Keep out!"

Unless you're invited, you can't come in.

Villa Cimbrone was bought
in 1904 by Ernest Beckett,

Second Baron Grimthorpe, who was
a banker and a Tory politician.

Grimthorpe wasn't an especially great
gardener, but he was a champion womaniser

and is said to of been the
father of Violet Trefusis,

who famously became the lover
of Vita Sackville-West.

Grimthorpe was a wealthy man, but he
bought Villa Cimbrone for 100 lire,

which, in today's money, works out
at the grand sum of just £300.

Hiring a local architect, Nicola Mansi,

Grimthorpe set about transforming the
agricultural vineyard and walnut groves

into a grand, glamorous garden,
with breathtaking views and vistas,

framed by a mix of temples,
grottoes, balustrades and statues.

The wisteria is absolutely lovely.

What is a joy, and really the
reason you come to Italy,

is here you've got all the
freshness of these flowers,

weather that feels like the
best English summer's day,

fantastic scenery, and it's sort
of distilled into a garden.

Actually, what's interesting
is to see a Judas tree,

pruned right hard and then breaking from the stem,
so you get this floral stick, bright colour.

I'm not sure whether it's as good as just a
normal tree, but it's certainly dramatic.

Grimthorpe died in 1917,

but his daughter Lucille enlarged the garden and
made it the centre on the Amalfi coast for writers,

such as DH Lawrence and
at the Bloomsbury set,

as well as musicians,
politicians and film stars.

It was a place where the very famous could come
and be glamorously private and uninhibited.

And it was here in 1938 that Greta Garbo,

the most famous film star of the
age, holed up with her lover,

the conductor Leopold Stokowski,

and first issued her famous plea
that she "wanted to be left alone".

That's a long walk for a garden.

There's sort of an element
of a motorway about it

and it's a bit themeless.

But, actually, I get it now, because
it's directing you down here.

It's saying, "Come on, get down here,"

because when you do get here, that's...

Well, it's a pretty scary view,

but it's just stunning, stunning, stunning!

And I suppose if you've got
a view as dramatic as this,

then your garden is just
funnelling the visitor,

you know, "Through the gate and get
down the end and have a look,"

and it's stately, and the sky's blue,
and it's just lovely in every way.

And as I was walking down, I was thinking
about, you know, Greta Garbo coming here,

and if you want to be private,
there's a sense of enclosure.

And yet this garden, you
know, is dramatically open,

and standing on here feels
a bit like a stage,

and if the public aren't allowed in,

you're completely private,
but you can be seen.

And I think there's something
about that with celebrity.

They WANT to be seen, they WANT to
be noticed, but on their own terms.

And, of course, this garden does
that absolutely through and through.

"Look at me, but from a distance."

The garden juts out on a finger of land
high above the rocky slopes to the sea.

Magnificent stone pines and yew
hedges grown anarchically free-form

provide shelter, as do the
pergolas laden with wisteria.

It all creates a secluded,
romantic setting,

yet the backdrop and buildings

are theatrical to the point of melodrama.

There's no doubt this is a lovely
garden and certainly worth visiting.

It's such a dramatic location and the way
that it's laid out is terribly theatrical,

which is an irony really, because when you think
of the people that came here, the Greta Garbos

and the DH Lawrences and the
Salvador Dalis and Churchills,

these are big, dramatic
people, coming as an escape,

but actually, they've
come as a performance,

and I think what would make this
garden come alive would be a party.

If you have this as a location
to have a great big bash,

the garden would join in, the setting
would become absolutely perfect.

By the 1960s, the Amalfi coast was
becoming increasingly a tourist resort,

and musicians, writers and artists

coming here for a cheap sunny retreat

had to travel further afield.

So, I'm now taking the ferry
across the Bay of Naples

to the small volcanic island of
Ischia, 15 miles from the mainland.

Nowadays, Ischia is a popular
day trip for tourists who come

not just to enjoy the island's beaches,
but to visit a world-famous garden.

But as recently as 50 years ago, the island was
remote, with no mains electricity or water,

and it was 60 years ago that a young woman in her 20s
came here and began to create a remarkable garden.

Hello?

Immediately you enter the garden, you're
struck by the lushness of the planting...

...which is flagrantly tropical!

Which is something of a culture shock
on this bone-dry Mediterranean island.

La Mortella is the life's work of
the Argentinian Susana Walton,

who married the enormously
successful English composer.

Sir William Walton when she was just 22.

Looking to escape the English winter,

they rented a house Ischia in 1949, neither
of them ever having been there before,

and fell in love with the island,

deciding that it was the ideal place
for Sir William to compose in peace.

They bought the land for
the garden in 1956.

It was an old quarry with no water supply,

but Susana, an instinctive
plants woman, was undaunted,

and started planting straightaway
with exuberant enthusiasm.

Following her instincts,
she selected exotic plants

from around the world and against all the
odds, the garden quickly flourished.

It's interesting that Ischia, with its volcanic
rock and its heat and its moisture, is so conducive

to things growing fast, so you get this
dramatic response, and the show is operatic.

There's drama, there's colour, there's
bigness, there's flamboyance,

and you can't really
have that in the north.

It's to do with the south, and you
needed someone from Argentina

with Latin in her soul
to make that come alive.

From the first, it was a major undertaking.

Russell Page, the pre-eminent English garden designer
of the day, created the layout of the garden

and the landscape was on a heroic scale.
Terraces were cut into the volcanic rock.

75 lorryloads of topsoil
were poured into the ravine

and huge cisterns for irrigation were filled with
water, shipped in by tanker from the mainland.

As the trees grew, it created
a benign microclimate,

which allowed Susana to create a subtropical
garden with plants from all over the world,

where bromeliads happily rubbed
shoulders with slipper orchids

beneath a canopy of tree ferns and palms.

La Mortella's head gardener, Alessandra
Vinciguerra, came to Ischia in 1997

and worked with Susana until
her death in March 2010.

From the start, the choice of plants was
hers and this is why it is so tropical.

She liked bold plants, she liked colours,

she liked the plants that
came from Argentina,

plants that were different from
what you would find in gardens

at that time in this area.

And when Susana saw a plant she liked, she HAD
to have it and would go to extraordinary lengths

to bring it back to La
Mortella, as the story behind

this huge silk floss tree,
Chorisia speciosa, displays.

That was planted by Lady Walton in 1983
from a seed that she took in Buenos Aires.

She went there for a concert and she noticed there
were some chorisias growing there, so anyhow,

she climbed on top of a taxi
and picked one of the fruits,

and from that fruit, from
that tree, came that plant.

This story seems to have been entirely
typical of her way of living and gardening,

and that energy and vivacity runs
like electricity through the garden.

It is a performance.

A garden wearing a stylish hat and a brilliant
smile whilst talking 19-to-the-dozen!

It is a very passionate garden.
It's full of life,

compared to the typical, formal, historical Italian
garden that people sometimes don't understand.

This one is understood or
is loved by everybody.

Above the subtropical tree line,
on the exposed old quarry walls,

the garden transcends its recent history
and becomes rooted deep in place.

Although this garden is PACKED with
plants, a lot of them unusual,

I have to say, none are nicer than the
Mediterranean natives like this rosemary,

prostrate, drooping down the hillside.

It's beautiful.

And the cistus, and the myrtle, and of course
La Mortella is taken from the name "myrtle".

These are native plants, as common as anything
you'll find in the whole Mediterranean,

but they absolutely look right at home.

This is where they live,

so they're comfy.

The garden is an expression of one remarkable
woman's flamboyance and deep passion for plants.

It sings with energy and colour.

But the garden began and ends as a
testament to the love of Susana

for her husband William, who died in 1983.

High up above the quarry, she created a
monument overlooking his favourite view.

Here is the rock which is the
memorial to William Walton.

His ashes are underneath here.

But I think the real memorial
is the garden itself.

It's a memorial to both of
them, William and Susana,

and although Russell Page is always
credited with designing the garden,

which obviously he did, that was his job, but the
thing that brought it to life was Susana's planting.

And I read that she quoted the famous remark that
you consult the genius of the place to inspire you.

The genius of the place is the love.

If you like, the whole garden is a monument
to them and their love for each other.

I headed back from the calm of Ischia
to the chaotic streets of Naples.

The overcrowded city seems to be spreading
in an unregulated, predatory way,

swallowing in its path
scores of small farms

on the outskirts that, for
centuries, have supplied the city.

There are now only a few survivors
farming high on the slopes

of an extinct volcano where
it is too steep to build.

Taking me to meet one of these last-remaining
semi-urban farmers is the writer and campaigner.

Bruno Brillante.

- Hello, how are you? - Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. Bruno.

Well, it's lovely to be here, but tell
me what is special about this place?

What makes it different to others?

Because this is one of the last places
where you can find the original farmers.

They still work in the traditional way.

No pollution, no chemical, and you can find the flowers
and plants that you cannot find in other places.

- Pepino!
- 'Pepino Polverino farms ten acres of land on the hillside

'behind his house, where he grows
superb fruit and vegetables.'

- Pepino.
- Nice to meet you.

These are fantastic. Look at that.

Lemon from this place.

- You grow these?
- Yes.

Beautiful. And look at all this. And
all this grown on the land here?

Those are broad beans. Wow.

It's beetroot.

- You will try after...
- Good. OK.

- Very fresh.
- Very fresh.

- I can't wait.
- Taste that.

- It's very good.
- Bueno.

Bueno. All this is harvested this season?

Only fresh, and only seasons.

So just up here?

'Although almost sheer in
places, the land on the slopes

'has been worked for at least 300 years, but
Pepino is one of the last remaining growers here.'

You won't get any machinery up here.

He come with the tractors.

Gosh, if he brings his tractor up
here, he's a braver man than I!

- So the soil here, what is the soil like?
- Volcanic.

- Volcanic soil, so very fertile.
- Si, very fertile.

I have visited a lot of allotments in my
time, but this is certainly the steepest.

The city is right there, isn't it?

- Yes. Just...
- Right there, and there is Vesuvius.

And how do you feel when you look out?

Fortunately, it has now stopped.

Only 20 years ago, there were fields of
orange and lemon trees, cherry tree.

'Is seems depressingly likely Pepino's
land will sooner or later also disappear

'under the remorseless, lava-like
flow of urbanisation.'

Beans, plums, apricots, you
know each individual plant. - Si.

Although the spread of Naples
is eroding these allotments

and market gardens, Pepino's land is no
quasi-rural affectation. It is the real thing,

And a perfect model for small
urban farms of the future.

This feels like a garden, even though it's
ten acres of intensive veg, you could say.

The fact that it's loved and cared for as much as any
garden of any description, I think does the trick.

There is that kind of human magic that works,
and it's been going on here for 200 years,

but I wonder, really,
how long this can last.

There's Naples encroaching in, like an angry sea, and
it would be a real shame if I were to come back here

in 20 years' time and find that where
I'm sitting now is a block of flats.

Pepino wouldn't let me leave without
sharing a meal with his family,

every scrap grown and
harvested from his ten acres.

Here, at the table, is the real heart
and soul of Italian gardening.

- This is your wine? - Yes.
- So everything here is made by Pepino?

- The wine too. - The wine too.
- OK. - To your very good health.

- Cheers.
- Cheers.

Naples is very different from the
rest of Italy and so are its gardens,

that have evolved over the past 200
years to become looser, softer

and more obviously romantic than its
northern Renaissance counterparts.

But there is one garden here
left to visit in the south

that is not just more romantic than
any other that I have EVER visited

but simply one of the loveliest, most magical
gardens of any kind anywhere in the world.

I'm travelling 120 miles north of Naples

to the hilltop town of Sermoneta
that lies above the marshy plain

in which is set the gardens of Ninfa.

When people discover that I've visited
a lot of gardens, they suggest ones

that I haven't been to, and a name that has cropped
up over the years more than any other is Ninfa.

So last year, I did go and
see it, and I was staggered.

It is just simply gorgeous.

And whilst, of course, there's great debate about
which is the most beautiful garden in the world,

there's no doubt which
is the most romantic.

For 1,000 years, Ninfa was an important town
on the main road between Naples and Rome.

At its early-14th-century
peak, before the Black Death

ripped through Europe, it was owned by
the Caetani family and had a castle,

seven churches, 14 towers,

a town hall, mills, 150 houses
and around 2,000 inhabitants,

all of which made it a substantial town.

Then, disaster struck.

In 1381, Ninfa was sacked by mercenaries
and pillaged by neighbouring towns.

The remaining inhabitants,
much reduced by plague

and riddled with malaria from the surrounding
marshes, evacuated it for healthier, safer ground.

The Caetani family retained ownership,
but for nearly six centuries,

it lay abandoned, with the buildings submerged like
sunken wrecks beneath the tangled undergrowth.

This is a town where people lived
for hundreds and hundreds of years,

where people died by the hundred,

and there are ghosts in here.

You're walking the streets

where Romans walked, where
medieval man, where people fought,

and there are just layers
upon layers of memories

in amongst the buildings, just like
there are layers upon layers of plants.

You don't want to speak too loudly,

not because you're disturbing other people, but
you don't want to disturb your own sensitivity.

Ninfa was not wholly ignored.

Visitors came to admire its melancholy decay and
the nonsense writer and painter Edward Lear

described it in 1840 as "one of the
most romantic visions in Italy".

The transformation into a garden began in 1905,
under the guidance of Prince Gelasio Caetani.

Gelasio took on the enormous task of
clearing the buildings from the undergrowth.

But the garden as we see it now
was started by his sister-in-law,

Marguerite, who planted on a grand scale.

And her daughter Lelia expanded Ninfa into
its modern state after the Second World War.

In medieval times, they
repeatedly would get plague,

and this was a low-lying area,
so there was lots of malaria,

and the town would be
isolated from time to time.

And to get food in, it had
to come by the river,

but they couldn't come right through,

so this bridge was adapted to
cater for that eventuality.

And if you come up here...

You can see that they
built into the bridge -

and these are the town walls, so
this is the edge of the boundary -

no-one could go out, no-one could come in.

But they built, in the bridge,
these vents, these openings,

and what they did was lower
baskets down on ropes

to boats that would come
from nearby with supplies.

And then up here on the bridge,

from the edge of the town looking in...

...you have one of the most stunning
views in any garden, ever,

in the world.

The way that Ninfa is maintained
is a brilliant balancing act.

Preserving the picturesque sense of
ruin and loss with great subtlety,

whilst scrupulously maintaining
the fabric of the place.

I've gone off-piste a bit. If you visit
the garden, you go on a set route

and admire all the obvious best bits, but I like
it if you can get behind the scenes a little bit.

The whole place is gardened
really carefully, and in fact,

all this, I know, is very carefully
assessed and considered.

You know, how much weed do you leave in it?

They don't want it looking
too spick-and-span,

and that would lose that sense of
history, but on the other hand,

they don't want to damage the fabric of the
buildings, and it's all carefully weeded and selected

and looked after, and what you get
are these layers of perception.

It's as though history's
mulching the garden.

Now, as I was talking to you just
then, I looked up and there,

in the oak tree, is the
most beautiful rose.

Ah, that's just lovely.

I think that the secret of Ninfa, as perhaps with
all truly great gardens, is that it enlarges us.

You go in to admire and enjoy, which
of course you do, but you come out

with a whole new set of parameters
with which to measure life.

It really is that good.

It may well be that there are bits of Ninfa that you
think could be improved or bits you don't like,

but, for my money, and I have
visited an awful lot of gardens,

this garden encapsulates the
performance of a garden,

the idea of a garden,
better than anywhere else.

And that's a result of this
extraordinary partnership between

1,000 years of history of mankind,

and the creativity of plants, nature
renewing itself all the time,

of people nurturing it and responding to
it, that can make a garden into high art,

and I think that, where you have man making
something beautiful in partnership with nature,

then it becomes something
completely life-enhancing.

These gardens that I have visited in the
south have a very distinct character.

They're quite different from
the rest of the country.

The combination of bright sunshine,
a sense of freedom of expression,

and a simpler way of life

has been the inspiration for gardens
of a more liberated, looser spirit,

than I have seen anywhere
else in Italy so far.

Next time, I'll be in the Veneto
and the lakes of the far north,

visiting gardens rich with plants,

as well as looking in on the gardens
of the very rich and the very famous.

- What's this one here? - Mr Clooney's place.
- Yeah, I can see why he might want to live there.

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