Featured holiday Rome area garden holiday for individuals Italy

We recommend taking a morning flight from London to Rome where you collect your hire-car for the drive of about 2 hours to Orvieto where you stay for the first three nights. The hotel is in the historic centre of the city, which is mainly pedestrianised. You can drop off your bags at the hotel before finding the car park beneath the city where you should park. There is a lift that brings you up from the car park inside the cliff to the historic centre and a couple of minutes on foot from the hotel. The hotel does not have a restaurant but there are plenty in the centre within easy walking distance.

Today we suggest you visit one of the most important gardens in Italy, Villa Lante at Bagnaia about 50 minutes’ drive from Orvieto. With its terraces, abundant water features of cascades, fountains and grottoes, superb stone carving, a geometrical water parterre with naumachia and tall plane trees, Villa Lante remains a pure Italian Renaissance garden, from which you can trace development in garden design in western Europe. On one terrace is the Fountain of the Table, with water channel reminiscent of an ancient Roman dining table. Linking two further levels is a water runnel in the form of a crayfish. Other than the 20th Century planting of some hydrangeas and camellias, most of the garden remains in its original form. About 15 minutes from Villa Lante you’ll find the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo, one of the more bizarre and eccentric gardens you’re bound to visit. This is a 16th Century park but, unusually, without a villa or house attached. The parkland contains large sculptures, placed seemingly at random and now of unknown purpose, of dragons, of elephant, of lions, and of mythological creatures, gods and beings. This is a unique garden, well-worth the visit, as it is so very unusual. Return to Orvieto for the night.

About 12 miles south-east of Viterbo and about one hour and 15 minutes by car from Orvieto, is Villa Farnese in Caprarola. Hailed as a magnificent masterpiece, the garden here harmonises landscape, architecture and sculpture and bursts with spectacular water features, cascading from the Casino del Piacere, dating from about 1560 and designed by da Vignola who also designed the main palace. There is a western winter garden and a norther summer garden. The squares are divided into compartments of four and lined with box and edged with male and female herms. Steps from the Casino are edged by sculptures of dolphins and horses spouting water into vases. Outside the entrance to the Casino is a large square, paved with pebble mosaic. Spend the rest of the day at leisure, perhaps going in to Viterbo to visit the San Pellegrino quarter with its mediaeval houses noted for the external staircases. Or, return to Orvieto, allowing time to explore the historic centre, with its striking cathedral. Own arrangements for dinner.

From Orvieto this morning drive south towards Rome for two incredible visits before reaching your hotel near Frascati, where you will be based for the next three nights. The first visit is to the Villa d’Este, now a UNESCO world heritage site and an impressive garden of man-made terraces, fountains, grottoes, nymphs, often considered a model for European gardens thereafter. The garden dates from the mid-16th Century and it represents the quintessence of an Italian High Renaissance garden. The garden descends in man-made terraces, which exploit the natural site. The speciality of the Villa d’Este garden is its water games and features, such as the Organ Fountain and the Walk of the Hundred Fountains, drawn from the ideas of Hero of Alexander. Then we suggest you visit nearby Villa Adriana, villa of the Emperor Hadrian and even in its ruined state is one of the most spectacular Roman gardens and an impressive monument to antiquity. The garden recreated a sacred landscape and a hydraulic system fed water to the main structures. Today it is still a magical site with wildflowers, meadows, tall cypresses, fishpond and pool remaining as features. Time to settle in to your hotel near Frascati which will be your base for three nights. Dinner is not included but if you want to have dinner at the hotel, we recommend that you ask us to book a table in advance.

The Giardini della Landriana occupy 25 acres of what was derelict farmland in the Pontine marshes and created since 1956 by the Marchesa Lavinia Taverna. The style of the gardens is a rarity in Italy due to the scale of the separate compartments (‘rooms’ with 32 in all) and the combination of luxuriant English planting and formal Italian structure. The garden is a mass of colour from April to October. Whites, blues, olives, citrus, cottage-style mauves and yellows abound. Formal and informal ‘rooms’ open and close in speedy succession. The influence of Russell Page is evident, especially in the Orange Garden. Then, we suggest you continue to Frascati to explore the town and to visit the gardens of Villa Aldobrandini. The gardens of Villa Aldobrandini are the best example of early Italian Baroque style. The villa is at the centre of the layout of the garden and is known for its water theatre with niches for statues, including one of Atlas holding a globe, and fountains. Return to your hotel for the evening.

The garden of Ninfa is an amazingly special place and described by many as the perfect garden. You will be impressed by the verdant location of the garden, fed by streams from the hillsides, the impact on the plants of temperatures that rarely fall below 10 degrees Centigrade, the dilapidated walls of the mediaeval village buildings that provide a microclimate for rare plants to flourish, trees and walls flower-covered and there are scents of rose and jasmine. This is a 20th Century creation on a mediaeval site and in the intervening years from its abandonment in 1382 to 1920 when the marshes were drained, the site was noteworthy for its wildflowers. This is a fantastic collection of plants from all over the world that flourish in this idyllic site, including many that are rare and tender. The afternoon is at leisure to relax at the hotel or return for more sightseeing in Frascati. Note: Ninfa is not open every day. Check open days before you plan your holiday dates.

There is a wide choice of flights each day from Rome Fiumicino back to London so choose one that gives you enough time to round up your holiday with another garden visit or more general sightseeing. One possibility is a visit to Castel Gandolfo built on the site of the court of Emperor Domitian. The garden is a combination of Italian parterres, walls, avenues of cypress and oak, grand fountains and classical statues.