The most beautiful gardens in the world on the NYT, five in Italy

Bomarzo, Ninfa, Villa Gamberaia, Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Villa Silvio Pellico in Moncalieri: the New York Times today published a list of the 25 most beautiful gardens in the world and five of them are in Italy. "A garden is the ideal place to spend a sunny afternoon, but are you willing to fly to the other side of the world for the pleasure of doing so?", asked the American newspaper, which asked six horticultural experts - Deborah Needleman, Tim Richardson, Louis Benech, Juliet Sargeant, Tom Delavan and Toshiko Mori - to select the "25 truly spectacular" and that "have changed the way we look at plants". Gardens from 20 countries reached the finals, with Italy and Great Britain in the lead. Other locations chosen by the New York Times include Sissinghurst Castle in England (Vita Sackville West's garden in Cranbrook), the High Line in New York and the moss garden at Saihoji Temple in Kyoto. In Italy, Ninfa, with its Caetani family history and rich microclimate, "is the kind of site that English garden architects of the 18th and 19th centuries tried to recreate with fake ruins and hermitages, but this is the real thing," write the Times consultants. Beloved by Edith Warthon, Villa Gamberaia north of Florence "is the most magical garden," "a divine place on a perfectly human scale," agree the experts. Of Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Japan's Mori highlights the "acoustic experience" afforded by the fountains, while Richardson praises the "wonder" effect the "monsters" have on children at the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo. Finally, Villa Pellico in Moncalieri, purchased by Umberta Nasi Ajmone-Marsan in 1948 and whose garden was designed by Russell Page, the same man who was working in the same years on the garden of his cousin Gianni Agnelli and his wife Marella in Villar Perosa: "Pleasantly symmetrical" like the one created in 1977 by Page at the Frick Collection (it was his only project in New York) with a similar rectangular pool in the centre with water lilies and lotus flowers.