A tree obsession, or should I say a two-tree obsession?

November 20th, 2009

Italian cypresses are so companionable with Italian stone pines

I did a lot of driving in Tuscany. More than I would have liked, just ask my girlfriends. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing between our remote villa and the train station in Chiusi about 45 minutes away. But there was one scene on the road between Trequanda and Sinalunga that caught my breath every time I drove past it and made the driving worth while.

Someone planted two lovely rows of trees on either side of a long driveway that ran perpendicular into the strada. And as I approached it, the classic, Renaissance-inspired pattern emerged, filling my line of vision with its elegance and storybook perfection.

When backlit, the tree shapes are even more distinctive

Silhouetted against the Tuscan sky, or back-lit by the sun, stood the contrasting shapes of tall, slender Italian cypress trees (Cupressus sempervirens) and upward-sweeping, umbrella-like forms of Italian stone pines (Pinus pinea).  The iconic forms alternate up one side of the drive and back down the other, ensuring a perfect display of two quintessentially Italian trees.

Thanks to the genius plantsman or woman who decided that these two trees – one, a spire; the other, a classic ovoid — should be grown together.

If ever I have enough land and live in the right climate, I’m going to replicate this gorgeous, satisfying, perfectly ordered pattern of trees. For now, I will share more photos. I stopped one morning and snapped oh-so-many views.

Another view of my favorite tree scene

Beautiful and orderly, an intentional planting scheme

Each time that I approached the pine-and-cypress-edged drive, a smile covered my face

P.S., this is the pine tree from which those delicious pine nuts come from.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 12:28 am and is filed under Creativity, Gardening, Landscape Design, Plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.