Ninfa: Paradise Found by Marc Zakian
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If Jehovah were sent back to earth to recreate Eden, he would find his work already done at Ninfa. The garden - two hours to the south of Rome - is so beautiful that visitors are often moved to tears.
Ninfa’s Jehovah is Lauro Marchetti - a plantsman and naturalist whose gardening owes more to philosophy than botany. Marchetti lives in Ninfa’s medieval former town hall – unofficial Mayor to thousands of plants, hundreds of species of birds and a languid, life-giving river which slips between ruined castles and churches.
Founded in Roman times, medieval Ninfa was a thriving city ruled by the aristocratic Caetani dynasty. The family was defeated in battle and Ninfa destroyed. Abandoned for over 600 years, nobody wanted to resettle a town so close to malarial marshes. Then, in 1920, English aristocrat Ada Wilbraham married into the Caetani family and started to restore the buildings and gardens.
Today’s Ninfa is the vision of Ada’s granddaughter. Lelia was an artist, who drew Arcadian fantasies of Ninfa, then handed them her gardeners, tasking them with turning her pictures into botanical reality.
With no heirs to run the estate, Lelia ‘adopted’ the seven-year-old Marchetti. “I was born on the farm next door,” he explains. “She found me running around the garden, and asked my father if I could help out. When I queried how long I would be here for, she smiled and replied: ‘for the rest of your life’.”
Lelia died in 1977 and Marchetti took over Ninfa’s 200 acre estate. “Lelia encouraged me to see the garden as a picture. To allow maximum freedom and expression to the plants, animals and birds,” he explains. “She never chose a plant for botanical reasons, only artistic ones.” This philosophy runs throughout the estate: a cypress tree reaches skyward with a rose piggybacking along its trunk. In most gardens the rose would be uprooted as soon as it tried to share the same soil, but at Ninfa it is what Marchetti calls “a happy marriage.”
As well as living harmoniously, the plants frame the buildings. On the medieval bridge a wisteria waves in the wind, its branches calling attention to its host.The centrepiece of the gardens is the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Nine hundred years ago Alexander III was made Pope here; now open to the elements and barely half-standing, a remaining wall still bears a Byzantine fresco which glints in the dappled sunlight filtering through the surrounding cedars.
“All the archaeological heritage is costly to maintain,” sighs Marchetti. “The 20th-century wooden bridge has been restored five times, the Medieval bridge three times, but we haven’t touched a brick on the two-thousand-year-old one - ancient Roman engineering has saved us a lot of money.”
Ninfa was first opened to the public by Lelia Caetani, who wanted to share what she called “the last hope for a joyous life.” Now thousands of visitors a year make a pilgrimage to the gardens, where they are met and escorted by specially trained guides.
Sheltered by the Lepini Mountains, the microclimate makes it a garden for all seasons. In spring the blossoming orange trees, hydrangeas and geraniums collide in a chromatic explosion. Along the river by the Roman bridge tall tulipiffera trees flower during the summer, their clear green buds slashed with punkish orange stripes. In autumn the tall Ginko Biloba turn a luminous golden yellow.
Marchetti believes in humanitarian horticulture. “See that poor old man,” he says, pointing to a tree propped up with several stakes. “He wants to live, so we’ll keep him going on crutches during his last years.”
As well as conserving the old, Marchetti hopes the garden will be an example to the young. “I remember schoolchildren coming here when three very rare black tulips were flowering. The first tulip disappeared, and then the second - I was desperate. So I put a sign by the third one saying: ‘I am the last of three brothers, if you pick me the others won’t be able to live in the future.’ After that every day there were children guarding the third tulip, which lived for a month.”
Marchetti’s home in the medieval town hall is the only building the Caetanis restored. During Margaret Caetani’s time this palazzo was a literary retreat for many of the world’s great writers. The eccentric Princess would host writers here. Visitors included Ezra Pound, Steven Spender, Henry James and TS Elliot. Rumour has it Elliot was her lover.
Lelia Caetani’s pictures hang on the town hall walls. “When I wake up in the morning I can look at her vision for Ninfa, then open the window and see if I am getting it right.” Marchetti has done his mentor proud; he is expanding Ninfa onto the adjoining farm where he was born, adding a giant bird lake flanked by walnut trees and his signature walkways with their scented lavender borders.
So who will be the next Marchetti? “I’m looking out for a person to take over from me. It would be best if that person was a musician or an artist. This is not a botanical garden, it’s a spiritual garden.” The spirit will surely continue.