This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

Reinhardt Garden was built on the border between Umbria and Tuscany, in a splendid setting near Lake Trasimeno and Cortona; this green facility was aimed at representing a new way of conceiving and understanding the very art of gardening.

The garden was created in 1999, when Thomas Reinhardt and his wife Martina Kofoth, both experienced landscape architects and botanists, recovered some 740 acres of land.
On the maze-like path inside the garden, nature suggests its transience, while life and death alternate in a seasonal dance; the garden comes to life in the summer and then fades away in the winter.

The visit begins in the “Tropical Garden”: a maze of 8.2-ft tall hedges takes a great part of the garden and tropical and sub-tropical vegetation thrives among them, plunged into in the “Sommerfloor” tiles on the ground. Visitors may feel like entering the very heart of a jungle.

A wide grassy belt winds between the valley and the slope connecting the Tropical Garden with the “Garden of Olives”. The latter is where ancient traditions are perfectly blended with constant experimentation; there are many old olive trees (Olea europaea) which coexist in perfect symbiosis with small delicate flowers featuring evanescent shades. Evergreen shrubs and large clumps of covering plants shine on the painstakingly-modelled ground, in the changing light that penetrates through the silver foliage of the trees.

The display of colours, the variety of plants, and the arrangement of the rocks are undoubtedly the result of careful “listening” to Mother Nature.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)