Villa Gardens: Pliny and the Renaissance Garden

Where the conscious relationship of the whole garden to the vast amphitheatre `such as only nature could create' and yet so ordered `that you might fancy you were looking on the imaginary landscape of a first-rate artist'? Where, too, do we find before this the careful juxtaposition of the wild garden and the formal? It is apparent that we are dealing now with an art that has already for some time been of age and is discovering its possibilities with the freshness of a first maturity. Pliny's Tuscan villa garden was no remarkable affair and in his own day there were no doubt many larger and more lavish. The ruins of Domitian's villas imply gardens of great extent; the Golden House of Nero spread over nearly fifty acres within Rome itself; it is no more than accident that the details of Pliny's have survived whereas so much that was greater has perished. And yet if one could choose an example from any age it would not be the most remarkable instance that would necessarily best illustrate the fullest achievement of its art, but rather a specimen that was a product of the taste of a moderate aristocracy. The Roman villa garden was precisely what one would expect a wealthy land-owner in an opulent and settled community to make of a Greek idea. It has become orderly, personal; the shape of the public garden remains, but there are no noisy games and antagonisms, no hostile debaters; rather it is now a place to which the spirit, relaxed, can retreat from such things to find quiet and refreshment. The one essential feature in Pliny's gardens is private enjoyment. Listen to him again in a short note to a friend: `How stands Como, that favourite haunt of yours and mine? What becomes of the pleasant villa, the ever-vernal portico, the shady plane-tree grove, the crystal canal so agreeably winding along its flowery banks, together with the charming lake below, that serves at once the purposes of use and beauty? What have you to tell me of the firm yet springy avenue, the bath exposed on all sides to full sunshine, the public saloon, the private dining-room, and all the elegant apartments for repose both at noon and night? ... Leave, my friend (for it is high time), the low and sordid pursuits of life to others, and in this safe and snug retreat emancipate yourself for your studies.