The 'In Italy' Method of Garden Design

This is for anyone wanting a pretty garden yet abhors any hint of a Garden Design 'rule'.  Why would you?  You're smart, you're going to recreate the wheel, your Garden Design will be marvelous, anything done by anyone in any era will pale in comparison.  With sincerity, and your wallet, off you go to Home Depot, on mission.

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Beyond this, while typing 97 words/minute, twirling a bit of hair just above the right shoulder with my right hand at the same time, and glancing out the window into meadows with dairy cattle framed with century old pecan trees, I need go no further.  

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Aside from describing myself, it describes my favorite clients to work for.    

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One client, for sure, knows what's coming next.  Any sentence beginning, "In Italy....."  She smiles & freezes, knowing what is next.  The most fabulous bit of Garden Design EVER.

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  Italy was probably my 3rd/4th historic Garden Design study tour pilgrimage among a dozen plus.

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Have you already intuited the Garden Design formula, above?  In Italy, it is a formula to have a formally clipped low/medium evergreen hedge, fronting,  blowzy shrubs behind, and the serendipitously sited tall cone shapes.  Done.

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Contents of no importance aside from drought tolerant, cold/heat tolerant, no bugs/fungus, not invasive or too fast growing, etc.

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Now, look at the top photo again, as you have just read it scientifically pontificated.  No worries, I know who the doubting Thomas is, the spouse.

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Ok, moving on.

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In Italy, they place a pair of focal points, below, telling the eye & feet where to go.

  In Italy, contrasted shapes-textures-colors, this trinity, below, never fails.

In Italy, it is common to pair disparate objects as a focal point.  Below, obelisk on plinth.



In Italy, common, below, to stay all green.  Do you see the beginning of the French style Garden Design, below?  In Italy, they will tell you French food is merely the French take on Italian.



In Italy, just line it up, below.  You have know idea how many times this Italian Garden Design RULE has saved my a**.  Let it save yours !  I should do a coffee table book on this Garden Design rule alone.  In Oxford, Mississippi I took this Italian Garden Design Rule a step further.  A client had a few acres, and a major collection of old farming equipment, huge major pieces.  What to do?  Designed an evergreen backdrop tapestry hedge, read above again if you don't know what this is, and lined the equipment in front, Museum Style.
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Still so proud of myself for that bit of 'genius'.  Stealing not merely Italian, but from museums too.



In Italy, whatever they serve & however they serve it, below, it is the Julia Child rule for food.
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Don't know the Julia Child rule for food?  If she said it, wrote it, did it, it's for you too.  Julia's best, "Asparagus is to be eaten with your fingers."  Seriously, she said this on one of her shows.  Occasionally I'll make a faux pas at a meal, the quick recovery, "Julia Child said to do it this way."



More ammunition/proof for the In Italy method of creating marvelous?  How many gorgeous gardens will you see driving about USA today?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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All pics, Ben Pentreath.  Don't know Ben, or Charlie?  Discovered their blog recently & am enchanted, you will be too.