Wharton, Edith; Parrish, Maxfield [Ill.]: Italian villas and their gardens (London: John Lane, 1904)

ITALIAN GARDEN-MAGIC
head and fruit was espaliered against the walls. But
in the rapid flowering of Italian civilization the castle
walls were soon thrown down, and the garden expanded,
taking in the fish-pond, the bowling-green, the rose-
arbour and the clipped walk. The Italian country house,
especially in the centre and the south of Italy, was
almost always built on a hillside, and one day the
architect looked forth from the terrace of his villa, and
saw that, in his survey of the garden, the enclosing
landscape was naturally included: the two formed a
part of the same composition.
The recognition of this fact was the first step in the
development of the great garden-art of the Renaissance:
the next was the architect’s discovery of the means by
which nature and art might be fused in his picture. He
had now three problems to deal with: his garden must be
adapted to the architectural lines of the house it adjoined;
it must be adapted to the requirements of the inmates of
the house, in the sense of providing shady walks, sunny
bowling-greens, parterres and orchards, all conveniently
accessible; and lastly it must be adapted to the land-
scape around it. At no time and in no country has this
triple problem been so successfully dealt with as in the
treatment of the Italian country house from the begin-
ning of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury ; and in the blending of different elements, the
subtle transition from the fixed and formal lines of art
to the shifting and irregular lines of nature, and lastly