Alto Lazio: Gardens 1

This holiday was billed as featuring gardens.  What the brochure didn't say (and there was no reason why it should have) is that all/most Italian formal gardens are built on hillsides and feature lots of terraces and steps. These proved to be a real problem for me - and for a couple of other people.  After falling up a step at one (I cannot do very steep steps any more) I felt it was safer to opt out of some parts of the later gardens. This means my photos are a bit restricted but if you go to the websites of the places you can see much better ones!

One feature of gardens in this part of Italy is citrus fruit.  These lemons were in garden of the Palazzo del Principe del Drago in Bolsena where there were also lovely pomegranates.  Of course all the fruit was on the trees at this time of the year.

The next garden we visited was the Castello Ruspoli at Vignanello.  It has a wonderful formal garden with hedges and examples of every kind of citrus fruit imaginable set in large pots at the corners of the beds.

As you can just make out in this picture there is a fountain at the centre

Beyond the formal garden is a lawned area much more reminiscent of English classical gardens.

This part of the garden runs right along the top of the escarpment.  However, to the right, there is a lower level garden, set out to look like a pack of cards.  You can make out the different suits of cards in this photo.

Here you can see how steep the bank is.  The castle is set high up for defensive reasons.

The roofs of these houses provided me with some of the images in my last post.