Walk Through Landscape Designer Paolo Pejrone’s Happy Gardens – Architectural Digest

Paolo Pejrone remembers the moment when his life took an irrevocable turn. It was January 8, 1970, at around four oclock in the afternoon, and Pejronethen an architect in his late 20swas visiting the Turin home of Gianni and Marella Agnelli. The couple were family acquaintances, and though he didnt know them personally, the eager young aesthete had accepted a teatime invitation in the hope of being introduced to Marella and her houseguest, legendary British landscape designer Russell Page. I met them both at the same moment, recalls Pejrone, still pinching himself over having encountered his greatest patron and his greatest teacher in a single afternoon. That conversation changed my life.

Over the past half-century, Pejrone has done anything but squander his good fortune. Now 76 and an esteemed landscape designer himself, hes created some 800 gardens across Europe for clients ranging from the Agnellis to Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti to Prince Sadruddin Aga Khaneven, he reveals, for the joy of Pope Benedict. His new book Private Italian Gardens (Mondadori Electa) highlights this illustrious past, but it can barely hint at the future: Pejrone is busier than ever, tending to a grand estate on Capri, a Renzo Pianodesigned hospital in Bologna, and a historic plot near Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Page remains a touchstone because Pejrone apprenticed alongside him for 18 fruitful months in England, Ireland, and Italy. Russell made me a gardener, Pejrone says by phone from Bramafam, his own Arcadian retreat in Piedmont. He was a huge school for mein simplicity most of all. I learned that little and big things can be at the same level of importance. How to arrange and grow plants, how to think about space. They are different languages, but the same story. Following his time under Page, Pejrone traveled to study gardens his mentor had admired and later collaborated with Marella Agnelli on the grounds of Alzipratu and Villar Perosa, her homes in Corsica and outside Turin. The latter was Pages masterwork. I believe he was the only real disciple Russell ever had, she told House & Garden in 2004.

The syllabus Page had prepared stopped short of South America, and in 1972 Pejrone decamped for Brazil to visit the landscapes of Roberto Burle Marx. For six formative months, he studied with Burle Marx and drank in the ecological precepts of Rio de Janeiros visionary artist/plantsman. Russell was the best of the past, he observes, but Roberto was the future. In 60 years of gardening, Ive moved from Page to Burle Marx. Gardening now is coming not from my eyes or hands but from the heart.

For all its diversity, Pejrones work is distinguished by a profound sensitivity to site. Many of his gardens hover on the edge of steep banks that he tames through skillful terracing; sun-drenched areas are often enlisted as olive groves because, as he explains, the superfluous alone will not bring harmony. And the designer is a true conjurer of shade, coaxing it into being in subtle and myriad ways that range from jewel-toned passages, where roses tumble over lofty pergolas, to penumbral glades that move across cool lawns like love notes slipped under a door.

Penelope roses cover an arbor at a hillside estate in Porano, Italy.

Dario Fusaro/Private Italian Gardens, by Paolo Pejrone, Mondadori electa, 2017

A pragmatist as well as a romantic, Pejrone sings the praises of happy landscapes arrived at through hard work and great effort, no doubt, but without making too much noise. A garden thats too elaborate, too sophisticated, too neat will eventually become a nightmare. Potagers are often the heart of his schemes, and clients enjoy their eggplants and strawberries knowing thatat Pejrones urginglukewarm water, heated by the sun, has been used to irrigate them. If that sounds a bit silver-spade, he doesnt think that way; hes simply invested the time to learn what plants need and what they dont. Too much peat and too much water in the garden can wreak more damage than one can even imagine, he warns, slipping into the tone he perfected as a longtime garden columnist for two of Italys biggest daily newspapers, La Repubblica and La Stampa.

His national popularity comes as no surprise. He tolerates weeds, shuns fertilizer, and turns a blind eye to the small creatures who, he insists, have as much right to the landscape as he does. (Perhaps the Italians have never met Pietro Rabbit?) A true child of the 1960s, Pejrone writes of his own garden, All the plants and I want is to be happy without any hang-ups.

These days, Pejrone is the mentor, turning out solidly trained graduates every year at a horticultural school outside Turin. We are making real gardeners, with their hands, hearts, and heads, the designer insists. Not dreaming, but really effective. Plants are in the heart and the heavens. The gardeners have to be in the middle. For Pejrone, the middle is no doubt a ravishing place.

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Walk Through Landscape Designer Paolo Pejrone's Happy Gardens - Architectural Digest