Customer Reviews

The Garden Lover's Guide to Italy (Garden Lover's Guides)

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This is the most comprehensive guide I have found to Italian gardens open for visitng. Written by Penelope Hobhouse, one of England's foremost garden designers, it offers a real garden-lovers insight into what makes Italian gardens truly unique in style. The book is laid out in sections according to regions of Italy with good regional maps attached for route planning. Each garden has its own summary including an history of its design and later modifications, with elegant pictures, symbols denoting especial features, hours of opening, and other nearby sights worth visiting. "Gardens of Italy" is a slim volume perfect for not only plannning a comprehensive garden-accented trip from home but also small enough to carry whilst travelling. It is best used as an aide for advance planning rather than ad-hoc garden visits as many gardens are privately owned and visits are by appointment / advance arrangement only, a fact which Hobhouse notes in herforeword, but which after all is hardly her fault!

I visited Tuscany & the Marches & Florence this past September (2005) and bought this book to guide me through planning a garden tour itinerary. Initially I thought the book's organization structure of grouping gardens in chapters devoted to a particular region would be perfect. It turned out to be very hard to use and frustrating. In the chapters, the gardens are sometimes listed by their name and sometimes by their town so there is no logical order. Plus on the maps the gardens are numbered haphazardly - the five gardens around Padua should be numbered sequentially but instead they are 2,3,4 and 8&9. The info for each garden though is detailed and lists the hours, fees, who to contact for appointment only gardens and nearby sights. It also covers the history of the garden. If you are going to tour gardens in Tuscany and Florence I would highly recommend a book I found in Florence at the Boboli Gardens. It is "Gardens of Florence and Tuscany - A Complete Guide" by Mariachiara Pozzana and is published through Giunti. The ISBN is 8809020642. It has MANY more gardens listed, lots of history and information and is well organized. Translated into English.