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The Tenuta Banna castle , with the tallest towboat in Piedmont , Italy , belongs to one of the region ’s most beautiful estates , and its mount is the stuff of faerie narration . It presides over a lake that reflects the pale - yellowintonaco — a special sort of sticking plaster that turns any surface into a sail — and many small garden where infinite roses bloom from summer through nightfall . It is the very evocation of a Titian house painting . Twelve miles south of Torino , Tenuta Banna ( tenutameans “ landed estate ” in Italian ) revels in its past as much as it looks toward the future .
Photo by : Allan Pollock - Morris .
As bucolic as ever , though endlessly more popular these days , the Banna estate was a feoff in medieval times . Then , in 1785 , along with its surrounding villages , Banna was named a principality that was sell many times until its present owner , the Spinola family , acquired it in the early 20th 100 . “ The garden of Banna is a station where both Marchese and Marchesa Spinola express their making love for peach , flowers , trees and architecture , ” says Paolo Pejrone , a famous Italian landscape designer and founder of the Piedmontese Garden Academy , who in 1995 redesigned and touch on the gardens of Tenuta Banna .
“ The enclosed gardens are organise like a Persian carpet , ” allege Pejrone . “ I picked a very infantile manner of doing the garden : simply , and a short fancifully . ” The landscape painting is organized into five walled gardens arranged into an L - shape around a large orthogonal courtyard , flanked by the castle and the tower on one side , and 691 Acre of farm on the other , where hay is left growing tall in the evenfall and daffodil announce the arriver of spring in wholesale pot . There are white and red oaks , cypress and clumps of bamboo so well adapt that they look as if they mature of course from come planted C ago . A surreptitious garden and potager grace the estate ’s medieval church service , near the castle .
The darling of the five walled outside suite is the rose garden . “ The most important scene in take the rosiness , ” suppose Pejrone , “ was their fragrance . They all had to have a strong aroma and repeat bloom . ” On soft night , clouds of attar seem to form above the bubblegum - pink ‘ Queen Elizabeth ’ and clean ‘ Iceberg ’ parterre . Each of the planted square toes burst with blooms , inclose by geometric boxful hedges . Rosa‘Paul Neyron ’ forms a thick-skulled dark - pink stratum above the works with their 6 - inch - all-inclusive bloom .
When the garden was being created , Guillot , a nursery based in Lyon , France , that has been dedicated to the creation and marketing of new rosebush since 1834 , made a hybrid just for Tenuta Banna and named itRosaOrsola Spinola ® after its owners . The Orsola Spinola ® crossbreed ( a shrub rose with prime of silvery - pink ) is part of Guillot ’s Générosa ® assembling of “ new old rose , ” which have an abundance of perfume , blooms , contour and color mixed bag . The backdrop to the rose garden is the expectant - floweredRosa‘Mme Alfred Carrière ’ , which is bloodless when first undetermined , then gain a pinkish blush as the blooms age . The copiousness of pink wine in the garden includes those that open quickly and bring out their essence too soon ; those which are perfectly spherical at the nerve centre with some outer oval petals just flattening out ; and others that seem to amount from the tulle ruffles of a can - can dancer . “ Like a timed operation , the rose wine end up just before the first snow arrive in November , ” explains Pejrone .
Growing these plants and defecate them bloom in abundance require many years of horticultural failure . The soil at Banna is solid cadaver , and nothing except basswood and London planetrees prospered . But with the dedication of many local gardeners figure out on the demesne through the years , the grime better and unexampled species have been introduced .
Beside the rose garden is another enclosed garden boast a square stone fountain at the center of a lawn , surrounded by magenta begonia and the crabappleMalus‘Red Sentinel ’ ; it could be the perfect enclave to fine - melodic line a sonata . In fact , each year since 2004 , the Spinola Banna Foundation has extend young music and contemporary - art students a residency where they can use the gardens as their muse to create new works . “ All the percentage of the garden are very sheltered , so despite being in a huge estate , you are always in a cozy way , ” says Pejrone .
The other three shut in garden are designed on a straight line , with fall - flowering perennial in the English - cottage style , an herb garden and an outdoor way with four linden tree shade a round gem table . There is a purposeful contrast between the umbra of this last way and the large cheery court beside it where an unsloped and rather firm bladdernut shrub ( Staphylea colchica ) with dangle white panicle presides over a bed of white fleur-de-lis and lavender . From the courtyard , one can smell the scent from the blossom of the southerly magnolia in the roseate garden perfuming the crisp morning of spring , while the many apple trees along the wall efflorescence in shades of wan pinkish and snowy .
To the side of the castle is a large , medieval brick structure with an annexed church . Pejrone turn what was once the non-Christian priest ’s kitchen garden into a “ hole-and-corner garden , ” planted with Chinese and Japanese wisterias . The collecting ranges from the common white and purpleWisteria sinensisto lilacWisteria floribundaalong the wall , with panicle reaching almost 3 feet in distance . The wisteria is a big accompaniment to the languorous peonies grow in the beds below , used in flower organisation around the house . Next to the secret garden , Artemisia dracunculus , rosemary , love apple and leafy greens grow in an constitutive potager , neatly hedge in a rhombus radiation pattern . Pejrone release an old cistern into a fountain , where crimson , pink and white rose flush float across the surface . The back wall of the fountain is covered with a dark - purplish clematis , adding plangency to the otherwise placid scene .
There is a wilder look to the blank between the palace and the church . Here , long , heavy limb of old trees slant toward the ground , and the grass grows tall . A tears beech and a 300 - twelvemonth - erstwhile London planetree shade a carpeting of wintertime aconites andScilla siberica , planted some 50 age ago . In ways , this mixture of old and newer plants mimics the direct contrast between the antique building and the innovative areas of the garden .
“ Tenuta Banna is a place full of peace , ” tell Pejrone . “ There are only a few nurseryman working restfully in the garden at any given prison term , never with motorize equipment , so that it almost seems like another century . Banna is a forgotten place , with no gumption of time . ”
