garden designer, italy

From The Sunday Times
February 1, 2009

The eco gardeners from Tuscany

At the Tuscan farmhouse of environmental pioneers Teddy and Katherine Goldsmith, even the olive oil is home-grown
If you have any guilty green secrets – the beans in your basket have been flown in from Kenya and the apples come from South Africa – a visit to Edward and Katherine Goldsmith’s home in Tuscany would prove a chastening experience. A peek inside the kitchen cupboards reveals packed shelves of homemade jams and pickled vegetables; great bunches of lavender are arranged on a kitchen worktop, ready to be distilled into essential oils; and olives gathered from the slopes the couple owns below have been pressed, their oil bottled.
In a cellar, garlic and onions hang in bunches, and apples and pears are laid out on racks for eating through the winter, along with tomatoes dried in the sun. And when the couple offer hospitality to friends and family, Katherine doesn’t dip into the deep freeze to dig out the Bird’s Eye peas – they don’t even have one.
So who are this latterday Tom and Barbara, living la dolce vita in the Tuscan hills? Edward, 80, better known as Teddy, is a pioneering environmentalist who founded The Ecologist magazine in 1970 – his nephew Zac edited it later, before becoming a Conservative parliamentary candidate in 2007 – and Katherine, 57, is an environmental campaigner and writer. Her expertise is in how cities can sustain themselves, especially in these days of climate change and increasing population.
They spend three or four months every year in the small hamlet they have owned for 10 years in the hills between Florence and Siena. The origins of their property –which consists of a main farmhouse, or casa colonica, and a few surrounding outbuildings, set in 25 acres – go back to Etruscan times. In the Middle Ages, it appears to have been used as a religious establishment that offered shelter to passing pilgrims.
The collection of farm buildings may not qualify as a conurbation, but these arch-ecologists are pretty well self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables, as well as eggs from the resident chickens.
It’s a good thing they are able to feed themselves so well: along with his brother Jimmy, the larger-than-life industrialist who fathered eight children and died in 1997, Teddy has played his part in world population growth. He and Katherine have two children, Zeno, 22, and Benedict, 28, while he has another three from a former marriage. A forceful intellectual who once commanded the centre of a conversation, he is now frail, so he remains in the background during our interview, chatting on the terrace with visiting friends. So it is Katherine, a lean, energetic New Zealander whose project the property has been, who shows me around.
While renting a house in the hills nearby, Katherine visited the property to check out an olive press she had heard was there, as she was writing about them. “It was all abandoned, and it was for sale,” she says. “I ran back to my husband and said, ‘I’ve found a place!’ ” Having owned houses in Italy before, and come to know the vagaries of Italian workmen, Teddy was less than enthusiastic, until Katherine persuaded him that it would be the perfect home for his books.
His extensive library is now housed in a former hayloft above the press. Through the window are archetypal views of the Tuscan countryside: cypress trees line the pilgrims’ path that passes nearby, while Siena cathedral shimmers in the distance beyond the silvery olive trees. What catches the eye in the corner of the view, however, is a sight commonplace 400 years ago, but rare today: a formal orto, or vegetable garden, measuring about an acre and enclosed by a high bay hedge. The raised beds are laid out in geometric patterns, with a fountain playing in the middle. Sicilian gates, which were once used to guard against bandits, now protect the crops against marauding porcupines and wild boars.
Katherine decided on this medieval style not only because the organisation of the beds makes it easy to keep tabs on crop rotations (she keeps a detailed record of each year’s plan), but because it suits the property. She tried various designs for the plot, which is oddly shaped, but in the end asked for help from Christopher and Gaby Powell, British gardeners who were working in Italy.
Together they drew up plans, with additional help from Dan Wrightson, an architect. It was planted by Jonathan Radford, a gardener and designer who works locally, so the results were a true team effort. “What was meant to be a littleortobecame a little bit excitable,” Katherine admits. “My husband would say, ‘I thought you were just doing a vegetable garden.’ ” Yet it was Teddy she had in mind when she planned the garden with a monastic theme. “He is such an intellectual,” she says. “I wanted it to be somewhere he could go to contemplate and read, as well as being utilitarian.”
An enclosure to one side is shaped like a wedge of cheese, planted with fruit trees and overlooked by a statue of a nun. It is the tranquil space she envisaged for her husband. “Enclosed gardens were green because it was the metaphysical symbol of rebirth and revitalisation,” Katherine says.
In the main area, the beds are laid out so you can work on them without having to trample on the earth, while the paths are modelled on those found in Benedictine monasteries – wide enough to pass someone kneeling as they work. As well as fruit and vegetables, there are plenty of herbs, including basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage and chives, that would have been found in a monastery garden, for both culinary and medicinal use.
Katherine is not, however, a slave to the past and the modern palate is catered for. She collects seeds from around the world, including garlic from Lancashire, aubergines from Thailand, Russian tomatoes, potatoes from Switzerland and okra from the Albanian gardener’s visits home. In the warmest, sunny parts of the garden are nectarines and peaches, almonds and plums, pomegranates and persimmons.
Despite the solar panels that provide power for the fountain, fed by rainwater collected in underground cisterns, it is a timeless picture. “When you look at Renaissance paintings, in the background are scenes of Tuscan life,” Katherine says. “It hasn’t really changed.”

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