Liguria, on the north-western coast of Italy, has a unique micro-climate which allows many rare and unusual plants to survive the winter. The gardens you will see are contrasts of traditional and modern, minutely designed and wild and exotic. In Liguria there is a garden to please everyone.
Your travels will begin in the lovely seaside town of San Terenzo in the ‘Gulf of Poets’, so it is called because it was one of the favorite vacation spots for many Italian and English poets in the 18th century. There you will visit a Villa whose gardens were originally laid out in the classic Italianate style and whose later additions were made by it’s English owners in a looser, softer style. Driving further North you will stop and visit a garden located in a spectacular setting overlooking the bay of Tigullo which was built in 1361 as an Abbey dedicated to San Girolamo. It has the most extensive Italian style garden in the province of Liguria. The walls are covered in: ficus repens, campanula carpatica and caper plants while the pergola is cover in a centuries-old wisteria plant. Moving on to the City of Genova, you will visit a Palace which is the largest existing monument created in the style of the Genovese Renaissance and whose gardens were first laid out in the second half of the 1500’s by the architect Perino del Vaga. Leaving Genova and continuing North you will visit two Botanical gardens which house the most curious and exotic plants in Liguria. The first was created in 1910 by a garden designer who decided to create a nursery where he could cultivate his own plants. The garden is still run by his family and now houses over 30,000 plants of 3,000 different species. The second garden is the world famous garden created by Thomas Hanbury along with his botanist brother as both a private garden and a center for botanical studies. Both of these gardens are located on the rocky coast with dramatic views of the Sea.