ITALIAN VILLAS AND 
THEIR GARDENS 
INTRODUCTION 
ITALIAN GARDEN-MAGIC 
T HOUGH it is an exaggeration to say that there 
are no flowers in Italian gardens, yet to enjoy and 
appreciate the Italian garden-craft one must 
always bear in mind that it is independent of floriculture. 
The Italian garden does not exist for its flowers ; 
its flowers exist for it: they are a late and infrequent 
adjunct to its beauties, a parenthetical grace counting 
only as one more touch in the general effect of en- 
chantment. This is no doubt partly explained by the 
difficulty of cultivating any but spring flowers in so hot 
and dry a climate, and the result has been a wonderful 
development of the more permanent effects to be ob- 
tained from the three other factors in garden-composi- 
tion— marble, water and perennial verdure — and the 
achievement, by their skilful blending, of a charm inde- 
pendent of the seasons. 
It is hard to explain to the modern garden-lover, 
