moon gardens, italy

moon gardens in italy by Jonathan Radford

how to design a moon garden in Italy

There can be few finer and more ideal contries in the world to design a 'moon garden'. Clear, moon-lit and warm Med evenings, together with a huge choice of perfumed Mediterranean plants on the Italian garden designers plant list makes Italy the perfect place to create a garden to enjoy the moon ... a 'Moon Garden'.

what is a moon garden?

Moon gardens are gardens that are designed specifically to be used and enjoyed during the evening. A moon garden's design is based around a planting plan, comprising of plants that capture and enhance the soft hues of moonlight. The plants in a Moon garden should ideally possess emit intense scents, in order to enrich the still, evening air with a heady and delicious cocktail of natural perfumes that, together with the sensual moonlight, drench the visitor in a blissful yet so often secret sensuality, only to be found in nature.
Garden furniture in elegant white or pale cream colour schemes will provide a comfortable and subtle ambience from which one can fully submerge oneself in the light white and pale-cream flowers emerging from a silver-grey and variegated backdrop. Classic climbing roses will jostle yet harmonise with the strongly scented flowers of white wisteria and jasmine. These will drape scent from above, while sprawling over each other on an elegant white pergola. In releasing their heady scents, they attract soft nocturnal moths, like the hummingbird or hawk moth that visit the flowers, in an air of secrecy, from early evening and on through the night. The strong structure of art topiary, in the form of boxwood or yew, will add an elegant and sophisticated presence and a light beige gravel walking surface will actually illuminate the garden from your the ground up by reflecting the soft moonlight.
Some good plants for Moon gardens in Italy are plants like Rhynchospernum jasminoides, a great, white-flowered and heavily scented, evergreen climbing plant. Rhynchospernum releases its heady scent until the early hours, especially when grown against a warm, south-facing wall. Gardenia jasminoides, with its shiny leaves and beautiful white flowers that emit a superb scent has come to symbolise la 'notte Italiana' , along with Osmanthus fragrans that also provides a superb evergreen structure plant. Lilium regale 'Album' (white lily) stands, elegantly over other perennials and delivers its scent to the night poetically.
White-flowered varieties of lavender reflect the soft moonlight elegantly against their sophisticated silver-grey foliage, along with Teucrium fruticans. Variegated-leaved plants like Iris pallida Aureo variegata strike a symbolic and sensual note with their striped foliage and pale blue flowers and the variegation catches the light with subtlety.
Structure plants like Agave ferox or Phormium tenax stand like sentinels in the night against the still air and perennials like Nicotiana alata grandiflora 'White' delivers projects class and a truly wondrous light perfume into the still sophistication of the moon garden.
The moon garden is clearly a quiet place of sensual interaction with nature where one can gather and reflect upon a moment in the garden that has never really been enjoyed or even attempted in quite the same way before.

Godetevi un momento tutto vostro che è rimane fra voi e la notte. "Enjoy a moment that belongs to just you and the night" ... in the Italian moon garden.

CONTACT ECOLOGICA TO CREATE A MOON GARDEN