FLOWERS WERE USED IN LITTLE RIBBON BORDERS 
Writers of these early times inform us of the great amount of interest taken in gardening as long ago as 1525, when a Botanic Garden was founded in 
Padua. The chief idea was to express “the spirit of all landscape” in a limited space as evidenced in the picture “Children Gardeners” (see above). 
This is a Gobelin Tapestry from a cartoon by an unknown French artist, which is hanging in the Royal Gallery of the UfFizzi Palace, Florence 
FLOWERS THAT FLOURISHED 
IN' THE GARDENS OF OLD ITALY 
HERBERT W. FAULKNER 
Narcissus and Pinks, Peonies and Fritillary, Roses, Acacia, and Other Bright Bloom 
Shone against the Sombre Greenery of Italian Gardens Nearly Four Hundred Years Ago 
|g£||T IS a prevalent notion that the splendid old gardens of 
YTjuF Italy were planned and planted to produce an effect 
of beauty through combinations of sculptured marble 
-tflosl and verdant foliage, and that flowers were absent, or 
quite subordinated in their use. The reasons given for this 
belief were: (1) that there exists to-day no trace of flower-plant¬ 
ing in the ancient and neglected gardens, (2) that the spirit 
of Italian garden composition did not cal! for flowers to enhance 
the effect aimed at, and (3) that the climate in Italy in the 
summertime is so dry that flowers will not flourish. 
Personally I could scarcely reconcile this view of the art 
of the Italian gardener with the art of Italian sculpture, poetry, 
and painting, all of which are, so to speak, embellished and 
garlanded with llowers. And to decide the matter, a tour of 
the gardens near Florence was undertaken, and several li¬ 
braries were visited in search of records of llowers that bloomed 
and faded many centuries ago. 
These visits to venerable gardens, though delightful epi¬ 
sodes, were of less service in throwing light on the question than 
was expected, for the reason that, since their days of glory, de¬ 
cay and rank growth have obliterated most traces of floral 
borders, and I had to resort to old pictures, plans, and dusty 
books for enlightenment. 
The paintings, views painted while the gardens were young, 
give testimony of the presence of flowers in discreet abundance. 
Usually some event of sacred history is depicted as occurring in 
a forma! garden, where flowers bloom profusely among the 
grass of a lawn set in classic surroundings. Others show nar¬ 
row borders planted with Lilies and Roses. Fra Angelico often 
painted his sweet angels in surroundings like these, and his 
“Massacre of the Innocents” and “The Prayer in the Gar¬ 
den” show flower-borders. Botticelli’s “Madonna” in the 
Louvre is painted against a hedge of Roses in bloom, Pinturic- 
chio shows us “Susanna” in an enclosure of Roses trained on 
golden reeds, and Nicolo Alunno (1430-IS02) has left a picture 
of “Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane” in the Long Gallery 
of the Louvre, where we see a formal garden with flowers in the 
foreground, and a surrounding hedge of flowering shrubs about 
a group of square beds, each planted in rows. 
Some old engravings give contemporary garden plans. One 
of these from the Villa Pamphilia Doria dated 1644 shows us a 
portion marked “Parterres”; another, of the Bobili Gardens, 
planned by Amanti in 1568, includes a sumptuous “Island of 
Flowers”; the Villa Papa Gulio (1550) has flowerbeds edged 
with Box; and an old plate of the Villa Medici at Rome shows a 
group of beds marked “giardini di fiore e agrumi.” 
Among contemporary descriptions occurs the following writ¬ 
ten by Boccaccio about 1353, in his “Third Day” of the De¬ 
cameron, which is supposed to be a word-picture of the Villa 
Palmirer, as it appears at that date: 
All around and through the midst of the garden were wide, straight walks 
covered with vines which seemed to promise a plenteous vintage, and, being all 
in bloom, they gave so delicious a scent, joined with other flowers then growing 
in the garden, that they thought themselves in the spiceries of the East. The 
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