This was a high profile project for the owner of Castle Rubein, Contessa Du Parc. The castle is in a beautiful valley in the Dolomite mountains in Northen Italy and is therefore subject to extreme temperature fluctuations during the winter.
This project involved the complete transformation of several areas of the garden. These included a long perennial flower border and a cut flower garden in a formal Italian vegetable garden context.
Given the cooler climate of this part of Italy, I chose to use a combination of both Mediterranean and nordic perennials to create a fusion of the two styles, which is so typical of the 'ecologica' garden system.
This kind of Italian garden is easy to re-create in cooler climates, such as the UK, Germany or the US.