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Villa Percy is an ancient country villa that belonged to the Welsh engineer Benjamin Percy, who lived there with his family after moving to Sardinia in 1870 – he had, in fact, been asked to design and build the island’s entire railway network. It was Percy himself who built the villa between 1879 and 1882. This English colonial-style building was developed on 3 levels, with a quadrangular body, circular towers at the corners and decorated, inside, with valuable furnishings and exquisite refinements.

FLORA

Around the villa, there is a 10-acre typical English garden, mainly consisting of native plants (some of them are now centuries-old specimens), and several exotic specimens planted by Percy himself.
The native vegetation is mainly made of mixed formations of holm oaks, yews, maples, hollies, and downy oaks. Some centuries-old yews exceed 23 ft in circumference and may be regarded as relics of the original primary forest of the Tertiary Period.
The introduced species were painstakingly chosen in order to perfectly adapt themselves to this new environment and climate. Just to name a few, there are Himalayan cedars (Cedrus deodara pendula), Lawson cypresses (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), incense cedars (Calocedrus decurrens), and Spanish firs (Abies pinsapo).

The vegetation was just as carefully organized, in order to obtain large avenues, groves of trees of the same species, open spaces, and overall chromatic effects given by the different types of blooms. There is also an evergreen forest tunnel, one of the longest in Italy, made with beautiful specimens of Balearic boxwood (Buxus balearica).

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)