THE VILLA PALMIER] 
NEAR FLORENCE, ITALY 
By B. C. Jennings-Bramly 
Illustrated with photographs by Arthur Murray Cobb 
I N Italy a garden is essentially a luxury of 
the rich. The very expression, “Italian 
garden,” brings before the imagination long 
lines of stately walks, wide terraces and 
statues and fountains and marble seats and 
stone balustrades, to which flowers add the 
beauty of their color, without having been 
in the first thought of those who planned it. 
The homely cottage garden of England is 
not known here, nor does the petit bourgeois 
of an Italian town invest his savings in a 
patch of grass, ornament it with glass balls 
and rustic armchairs and proudly call it 
“mon jar din," as does every right-minded 
French shopkeeper. Neither does the Italian 
care for that which makes a German heart 
happy : a strip of ground on the high road, 
not too far out of town, where he can build 
an arbor and there, heedless of dust and 
noise, seen and seeing, he may enjoy his kaffe 
and kuchen. 
The Italian is more practical. It he buys 
land, he wants a podere, not a garden. He 
wants vineyards and olive trees, maize and 
corn of his own. He leaves it to nature to 
make things beautiful around him, and she 
does it well! In spring his every field be¬ 
comes a flower garden, brilliant with various 
colored anemones and tulips, and beautiful 
with the softer shades of irises and monthly 
roses. In summer he looks out upon the 
tender green of the young vine leaves, the 
misty gray of the olives and upon, here and 
there perhaps, a huge oleander bush all aglow 
with blossom. In autumn the deep purple 
of the hanging grapes, the darker green of 
the leaves make the podere beautiful. Why, 
therefore, should the man of limited means 
trouble to have a garden when he can enjoy 
so much beauty in the things growing for his 
use? Some such reason may, I think, ac¬ 
count for the absence of not only the poor 
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