Vicobello

The garden of Vicobello near Sienna was one of the first smaller gardens of the Rennaissance to be created. This delightful and secluded spot was where Cardinal Flavio Chigi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, would retire with his guests to rest and devote himself to his favourite pastime of hunting in the woods of evergree oak (ilex trees) which surrounded his property. The Chigi family commissioned the architect Baldassare Peruzzi to design the house and gardens between 1528-31 on one of their farm estates. Though on a much smaller scale than Peruzzi's Roman villas, the villa and gardens of Vicobello testify to Peruzzi's reputation for purity and unity of design, so understated sometimes that one could not be sure it was by his hand. Harold Acton dubbed him an `architect's architect' — and Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, an influential writer on gardens, rated Peruzzi second only to Vignola in 'delicacy and refinement'. What remains today of Peruzzi's garden is the layout. Vicobello sits on the ridge of a hill with a view over Siena, but it was conceived to be seen from Siena as an ensemble, the villa and garden representing the distinctive Chigi coat of arms: a pyramid — which could either be of bullions of gold symbolizing their financial power or represent the hills of Siena — topped by a star. A series of terraced walled 'secret gardens' rise in pyramidal fashion to the top, crowned by the villa. The Chigi arms are repeated throughout the garden, fashioned in box, in stone, as punctuation points, or in escutcheons. Peruzzi was also known for his understated use of old materials —brick and uncut stone — and these are evident in the construction of the walls, which 'give opportunity for many charming architectural effects'.

With his 1905 plan shown above, Inigo Triggs supplied a description of the garden of Vicobello as a 'series of eleven terraces, planted with long rows of square-cut ilexes descending to a meadow or ragnaia at the foot of the hill where formerly the young gallants resorted for the snaring of birds'. He went on to list a chapel, a coachhouse and an orange garden, bordered on one side by a long, low limonaia for overwintering tender potted fruit trees and on the other sides by thick-set hedges of cypresses and laurel, and its orange trees set within box-edged flowerbeds.

The villa is flanked on one side by the natural ilex woodland (Bosco) which Edith Wharton described as 'the indispensable adjunct of the Italian country house'. This remains today just as she saw it. On the other side of the villa is the upper walled garden where the limonaia overwinters the heavy pots of lemons on display in the box parterre from May to November. These are the most glorious feature of the garden of Vicobello today and can best be admired from its summerhouse – which Wharton described as a 'charming garden-house at the end of the path, in the form of an open archway faced with Doric pilasters, before a semicircular recess with a marble seat'. Fruit trees make an orchard in the walled garden directly below it, and a large cedar of Lebanon dominates the terrace below that. All the planting in the garden has been altered several times, the present scheme replacing what Wharton reported nearly a century ago as 'densely shaded' terraces 'planted with straight rows of the square-topped ilexes so characteristic of the Sienese gardens' which descended 'to a level stretch of sward (perhaps an old bowling green)' and ending with the 'ragnaia'.

The main walk terminated in the garden house.

At one time, lemons cost a small fortune and gave rise to the limonaia in which they were overwintered. The one at Vicobello still survives and is used to overwinter potted lemon and orange trees in the traditional manner.

The trees leave the limonaia at the beginning of May and return to their south facing glasshouse in early November.