Small Gardens with Different Variety: Pliny and the Renaissance Garden

My house commands as good a view as if it stood on the brow of the hill. You approach it by so gradual a rise that you find yourself on high ground without realizing you have been climbing. Behind, but at a considerable distance, are the Apennines from which on the calmest days we get cool breezes. The greater part of the house has a southern aspect and enjoys the afternoon sun in summer and gets it rather later in winter. It is fronted by a broad and proportionately long colonnade in front of which is a terrace edged with box and shrubs cut into different shapes. From the terrace you descend by an easy slope to a lawn and on each side of the descent are figures of animals in box facing each other. You then come to a pleasance formed of soft acanthus. Here also there is a walk bordered by topiary work and further on there is an oval space set about with box hedges and dwarf trees.' But the portion of this estate which gave Pliny greatest pleasure was the hippodrome, which appears to have been an open lawn shaped into a half-circle at one end and surrounded by a ring of plane trees covered in ivy, `so that while the heads flourish with their own green their trunks enjoy a borrowed verdure and the ivy, twining round the trunks and branches, links tree to tree.' Behind this wall of greenery are cypress groves `obscure, with dense and gloomy shade' and carefully contrasted with them curving alleys which enjoy the full sun. There are roses along the paths and the cool shadows pleasantly alternate with sunshine. The broad picture is of an extensive plantation in which are secreted a number of smaller gardens. `In one place there is a little meadow; in another the box is displayed in groups and cut into a thousand different forms; sometimes into letters spelling the name of the master or the signature of the topiarist; whilst here and there rise little obelisks intermixed alternately with apple trees.' In the midst of this elegant regularity one suddenly comes across what seems to have been a wild garden full of `the careless beauties of nature'. At the upper end of this plantation there was a semi-circular bench of white marble shaded with a vine which was trained upon four small pillars of Carystian marble. Water, gushing through several pipes, fell into a stone cistern and over that into a fine polished marble basin so contrived that it was always full without overflowing. `When I sup here, the tray of snacks and the larger dishes are placed around the margin, while the smaller ones swim about in the form of little ships or water-fowl.'