
The garden of Villa La Pietra is an extraordinary combination of life and art, present and past, that continues to evolve and change.
Cypresses, oaks, yellow irish yew, statues and fountains of over hundred years old coexist with a variety of vegetables which grow in the Pomario every season. While it recalls the memories and choices of the family who cultivated it for a century, it continues to inspire students, artists, and visitors today. It was originally designed as a prototype of the new twentieth-century formal and geometric garden and has since evolved into a model of sustainability and good agricultural practice.
When the Actons arrived in 1903, La Pietra garden was a typical English-style park. Arthur and Hortense collected books on the Italian Renaissance formal garden and visited many historical gardens in Tuscany, Lazio and Veneto from which they took inspiration. Since 1908, the formal garden has been located on the east side of the villa. It opens down through a series of geometric “rooms” where vantage points along the main axes allow views through arches of foliage or stonework.