Recalling the year 1936, Harold wrote: “From the terraces of La Pietra one could enjoy the illusion of being far from Fascism. Looking directly across the valley to the Villa Palmieri, one could contemplate the site of Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, a serene refuge from another kind of plague” (Acton 1965, 417). Unfortunately, the quiet of the garden behind the walls of the Acton residence did not last long. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Villa La Pietra and all its assets were confiscated from its owner Hortense Mitchell, since, as an American, she was declared an enemy of the regime in 1941. The family had to leave the house in a hurry and the two sons, then in China (Harold) and in England (William), were forced to enlist in the British army. The home, its collections, and the garden, despite their being located on the road towards the Futa Pass which saw the Germans and then the English come in succession, were miraculously protected by “special providence”, by the “nuns of the neighboring Carmelite convent “, and by the “good wine” that the peasants offered to passing soldiers, as Harold recounts (Acton 1965, 13). Furthermore, in 1939 the Italian state had listed the Villa (with its ‘ornaments’ and furnishings) and the garden, which allowed Hortense Mitchell to get her properties back after the Allied victory. After the death of the younger brother William (1945) and of the father (1953,) mother and son slowly found the strength to bring back to the garden the harmony and vital spirit that had distinguished it in the 1920s. It was especially Harold who understood its uniqueness and who therefore decided, like Voltaire’s Candide, to return to “a garden to cultivate“, and here, where he was born, to look for true beauty, which he had pursued for years going as far as China. Even though he didn’t undertake radical restorations, leaving the greenery to grow naturally—perhaps even too freely—he felt invested with the onerous task of the garden’s maintenance and therefore enhancement, as the many photographs of the sixties and eighties show, with guests and visitors from all over the world. In those years Harold also devoted himself to the study and publication of articles dedicated to gardens and a volume on historic Tuscan villas and gardens (1973), carefully choosing those in which there still lingered the spirit of the owners who had once inhabited them.
The personality of Sir Harold – he received the title of ‘Sir’ in 1965 – and that of Villa La Pietra ended up overlapping: the esthete, as he liked to define himself, ended up being remembered as much as the curator of his parents’ creation, as for his writings. The bequest to New York University was carefully planned as early as the end of the 1950s by Hortense and then completed by Harold, modeling what Bernard Berenson had done with I Tatti (donated to Harvard University) and with the aim of preserving and transmitting Villa La Pietra in its entirety as an ancient residence with its collections, garden, and farmland. Acton expressed the wish that after his death (1994) the estate be used as a meeting place where students, teachers and guests could study, teach, write and do research, and as a center for Italian and international collaborations, such as the one with the University of Florence, the European Institute or with the other schools of New York University.
Following the garden restoration project Landscape Master Plan (1998), curated by the English landscape architect Kim Wilkie and supervised by the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali e Architettonici di Firenze (Mario Lolli Ghetti and Giorgio Galletti), after 25 years of work, the garden is slowly returning to the way it was in the 1920s and 1930s, which is considered the highest and most significant moment in its modern history.
Thanks to the work of local gardeners coordinated by the English botanist Nick Dakin Elliot, who are direct descendants of those working at the time of the Acton Mitchells, the various ‘rooms’ of the garden have been restored with a soft touch, i.e. bringing to light the precision of the shapes, through the pruning of the greenery, the replacement of the old plants and the realignment of the views, without fading the magic, thus partially preserving the patina of time on the sculptural artifacts. Guided tours, drawing and photography courses, shows, concerts, readings and garden care are activities that, thanks to the commitment of NYU, are held regularly, combining the Tuscan tradition of garden care with a dynamic and diversified vision of the American university.
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