Featured holiday Tuscan garden holiday for individuals Italy

We recommend taking a morning flight from London to Pisa where you collect your hire-car for the drive of about 90 minutes to the hotel for the first three nights, the Villa le Barone at Panzano near Greve in Chianti. There is time to unpack and explore the hotel and its grounds as well as the country tracks nearby before dinner which is included at the hotel.

Today we suggest that you combine visits to Villa Poggio Torselli and Villa Villamaggio, both of which date from the 15th century. Villa Poggio Torselli is renowned for its spectacular flowering plants including Indian giant hibiscus and a golden crown of 120 lemon trees.  There is also in existence an original hydraulic system. Villa Poggio Torselli also produces its own wine and olive oil. You can join a tour here of the villa, the garden and including a wine-tasting. Allow time for a lunch in between and then proceed to Villa Vignamaggio which was the home of the Gherardini family and Lisa Gherardini who is said to be the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s Monna Lisa. The garden contains an avenue of topiary boxwood and four symmetrical grass and rose gardens. Mature cypresses provide a framework and shrubs have been planted in oil jars. Return to your hotel for your included dinner.

Today you head south in the direction of Siena, so it’s worth planning your day to include a visit to Siena. One of the two gardens we suggest you visit today is the Villa di Geggiano, which dates from the 14th century and is now a national monument, resplendent with ancient cypress, sculpted boxwood as well as lemon trees. At the front of the villa is the Piazzone, with large lawns at the sides, edged with low boxwood hedges and ending at the southern side with the grand theatre. The grand theatre (Teatro di Verzura) is lined with cypress trees and potted lemon trees. The proscenium has twin arches and niches that contain the statues of Tragedy and Comedy.  On the way back visit Badia di Coltibuono, a former abbey, where the gardens follow the design of the monks’ hortus conclusus. Today there is still a domestic quality to the garden with its pots of lavender, potted olive trees, clumps of hydrangea, and a vine-covered pergola. There is also a formality dating from the early 20th Century with its box parterre and magnolia grandiflora. This is a garden for all seasons. Return to your hotel for dinner which is included.

Between your hotel and Lucca it is only a drive of about 90 minutes but we suggest an early start so that you have time to visit the strikingly beautiful gardens of Villa Garzoni, dating from 1652 and famous for the balustraded terraces, symmetrical staircases and water features and cascades, which make the most of the dramatic hillside location. This late Renaissance garden contains a 17th Century maze and a 17th Century ‘parterre de broderie’ in the French style. The stonework contains niches with statues and fountains, and a grotto of Neptune, lined in ‘spugne’ with a fountain and waterworks. There is a restaurant at Villa Garzoni which makes a suitable place for lunch before continuing your route to Lucca. The city of Lucca is renowned as being a delightfully well-preserved mediaeval city, with its ancient walls still intact. Within the walls are alley ways, palazzi, squares, Romanesque churches, and a botanical garden that dates from 1820. There is plenty to do and see within the old walls as you stroll on foot from your hotel.

In the centre of the old town of Lucca, and about 10 minutes’ walk from your hotel in Lucca, you’ll find the baroque gardens of Palazzo Pfanner.  These gardens date from the beginning of the 18th Century and along the central axis you’ll find marble statues representing Greek gods. There are hedges of box and laurel, splashes of colour that change with the seasons – magnolia, camellias, b begonias, hydrangeas and roses. Perhaps after an early lunch, continue to the Villa Grabau and Villa Oliva (you’ll you’re your hire-car for the drive from Lucca to these two villas as they are about 20 minutes from the centre by car. Villa Grabau is renowed for its English-style parkland which abounds in rare trees, planted initially in the 16th century when the villa was built and added to over the years. Within the park there is the Limonaia built for the lemon trees in the 17th Century and the Teatro di Verzura. Villa Oliva enjoys views over the countryside near Lucca from its position on a hillside. Its gardens descend the hill and there are numerous waterfalls and fountains. A peculiarity is a hornbeam pergola that runs parallel to the south-north axis of the cypress avenue that leads to the house. Many of the plants you find in the garden today were mentioned in the first recorded description of the villa in 1593: limes, maples, holly, oak and hornbeam. Return to your hotel in Lucca for the evening.

Today you drive about 20 minutes north of Lucca again to meet your private guide at the first of the two gardens you visit.  The Parco Villa Reale di Marlia is an extensive garden and parkland with numerous linked water features, a lake, a Spanish garden, a lemon garden with over 200 citrus plants, a green theatre, probably the oldest in Europe and dating from 1664 to 1670 and composed of yew hedges pruned to create high walls and arched windows, a camellia walk and the Italian garden, consisting of two terraced gardens, the raised or hanging garden and the lower garden which is a formal Italian garden of geometric design and protected by terrace walls on two sides. In the Italian lower garden, paving featuring orange and blue gravel represents the traditional use of colour in paving in Renaissance gardens. There will be time for an optional lunch nearby in between visits. Villa Torrigiani is very pretty and ornate and houses a baroque garden with nymphaeum, grottoes, water games and flowers. Return to Lucca and your hotel for the evening.

We recommend that you choose an evening flight from Pisa so that you have most of the day at leisure, to explore Lucca in more detail, perhaps visiting the Botanical gardens, or perhaps go to Pisa on the way back to the airport.