If you are planning a trip to Venice in the post-covid ‘time’ and you would like to relax in a safe open area, we could plan to visit one or more of the private, often hidden and hence secret gardens of Venice.
discover the secret hidden gardens of Venice
Among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World as a child I used to love to fantasy on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a pensile paradise, a masterpiece of engineering with ascending tiered gardens, waterfalls, blossoming flowers and other amazing wonders.
In a city such as Venice where so many efforts were made to reclaim swampy marshy ground, where space was so limited and therefore precious, such an exuberant pensile paradise still remains in my fantasy…
If we set aside great expectations, something like an unexpected surprise will emerge from our visit to a private garden in Venice. Each Venetian garden has something specific and special about itself.
ROSE GARDEN
If you love roses a private rose garden facing the Grand Canal with dozens of types of roses spilling out from boxwood hedges among old statues with a small pond and waterlilies is the perfect choice in May, June and September.
Wall Street rose in a private Venetian garden facing the Grand Canal
WISTERIA AND DATURA
If you love pergolas with lavender-blue and white wisteria and datura or thornapples then there is a nice option also in Venice, especially in April, August and September.
Poisonous Datura stramonium and Datura wrightii with its poisonous spiny fruits resembling an apple, and hence the English name, grow surprisingly close to tomatoes and olive trees.
poisonous Datura fruit
JUJUBE OR CHINESE DATES
If you like Chinese dates we can visit another garden where you can reach out to the thorny branches and check by the beginning of August the olive-like dates still green, turning by the end of the month into a brownish colour.
GARDEN WITH ICE GROTTO
If you love gardens with small artificial hills, benches for meditation, a tiny bridge and an ice grotto, there is one left in Venice where you can even enter the ice grotto. In the winter months snow from the mountains was once stored here to provide then cool drinks in the summer months.
ice grotto in a Venetian garden
inside of the ice grotto in a Venetian garden
What about a garden with artichokes and kiwi trees? Or with kaki?
These are just a few examples. I am looking forward to guiding you soon through an unexpected green Venice.
ciao !
Fiona Giusto
www.venicetours.it
