Monty Don (gardener): “I like paths and corridors. They are often more interesting than the places they lead from or to. They also seem to me to be a good symbol of gardening itself, where the point is the journey – or the gardening – rather than the arrival.”
Boboli is like that: each path is also a corridor, between avenues of cypresses, tall hedges, there are the rooms you reach, or the vistas, the belvederi – but the very fact of something stretching before you is an invitation to a journey, to speculate – the fact that you cannot see everything all at once is an invitation to explore, to find private corners…..
“God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures;”
Francis Bacon “Of Gardens”, 1625 (He planted the walks at Gray’s Inn)Angels among the roses – pomegranates in flower and medlars with golden fruit against dark foliage and blue – the blue of infinity pale to lapis lazuli: Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes revisited after wandering through the Botanical Garden in Florence, 26 May 2003.
(Extract from artist’s book “Dance, Dreams and Journeys – fragments of a life”)
