Travels in Italy

M.J. Harvey

Moving on from his Italian pollarded trees in our November meeting, we are delighted that Joe Harvey will be providing an expanded presentation of his and Linda’s tour of Italian gardens. Joe needs no special introduction; he is one of the Society’s principals as seed specialist, roving botanist and talented writer as his “Story of the Understorey” will attest, in this month’s issue.

Joe Harvey’s tour of Northern Italy with the Magnolia Society started at the beginning, with an account of the glaciers descending from the Swiss Alps to gouge out the long valleys with their superb lakes. With Linda, their time was spent in the environs of Lakes Maggiore and Como. Having experienced much of their travelling life in ‘66’style motels, Joe could be pardoned for revelling in the magnificence of hotels like the Grand in Stresa, with its 19^th century belle époche style of mirrored corridors, and marble statues. More scenes of baroque rococo [a word to be pronounced with a rolling ‘r’] through the dwellings of the Borromean Islands, to the precise Italianate gardens with their unruffled waterfalls and white peacocks; all of these were captured by good Harvey photography, producing warm feelings of envy among the audience members. Our beauty-seeking Victoria environment, still a work-in-progress, is very different. But it is pleasing to see the settled result of the earlier centuries. 

We saw many magnolias, including an ancient tree of enormous girth. Fine specimens of camellias, mahonia, Chilean palm and Himalayan pine were viewed. Joe’s favourite pollarded London plane trees, refuge for the natives from the merciless summer sun, were displayed. Rhododendrons were not a principal feature, although two fine edgeworthii were seen along with an unusual rolling view of a rhododendron dell. Joe’s beloved hellebore niger, discovered growing in a tree crotch was also displayed. The tour finished with a visit to the residence of Sir Peter Smithers, a gardener of great repute whose famous principles were related by Carol Dancer in A Rhesplendence of Rhododendrons. A photo of Sir Peter’s book of his plant records, approaching 10,000 was seen.

Joe’s inimitable wit accompanied his lecture. Though rarely known for being formal, he sported a tie featuring a plethora of large snails. His wearing of this artefact, acquired on his journey, served as a special tribute to the occasion. We were duly honoured.

In the introduction to our program, a spring afternoon was resurrected with a Power Point viewing of the Massa’s, Bermuda Place, during the Silver Salute garden tour last April. A series of photographs taken by Moe and Johanna’s daughter, depicted the unusual and attractive features of this property that many of us experienced at our annual picnic visit last June. We saw the rhodos in bloom [they were over by the picnic time], the flags of Johanna’s and Moe’s homelands, the animal and avian artefacts surrounding the beds and pools. And the tour visitors, happily picking their way through the property, looked a lot like us, happily investigating these interesting features, on earlier visits.