The Secret Garden’s Italy program in Rome mixes summer’s rewards, the season in which this little-known tourist jaunt enjoys its greatest success. It’s the time of year when there is a twin blossoming of plants and wanderlust.

It’s easy to see what strong tourist pulls gardens are, here, as well as at home. The Chicago Botanic Gardens just north of the city and Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids overflow with leaves, petals, and people from April to August. Combine this seasonal rage with the fact that Italy is the most popular travel destination in the world, and it’s no surprise Secret Gardens Italy is a magnet for travelers. Garden tours here are also popular with the locals, and when in Rome . . . The true shock is that touring magnificent Roman gardens is still enough of a secret that the garden walk has yet to be saturated by lines, crowds and tourists. This is probably because the display created by nature is natural. Though availability is limited by the season, it does not require queues and is not confined indoors to rooms and galleries.

We spoke with Lisa Finerty, a Chicago native who moved to Rome in 2002 and is now the current host of Secret Gardens Italy tours. A former Merrill Lynch VP, Lisa’s lifetime avocation is gardening. She lives in the rolling hills outside of Rome, in a pastoral idyll, leading garden tours into Lazio, Rome and Umbria, taking travelers on personalized hikes through ancient garden sites, public and private, indoors and out, and all somehow related to the history of Western Europe’s oldest culture.

This passion for gardening began when Lisa lived in Chicago. She took a master’s class in horticulture at the University of Illinois extension program and her interest in gardening spread beyond the borders of her Bucktown backyard. Once her children were in school she got involved with various school beautification initiatives and was awarded an Annenberg grant which allowed her to fund school gardens and projects such as hosting soil-mixing workshops, and putting in bulbs and planting boxes with students and parents at schools throughout the city. Once Lisa and her husband decided to move abroad with their two children, it became clear that Rome was the ideal place to stoke her planted passion. Roman gardens have a history that rivals that of the city’s ruins. Roman gardens started in the soils of Arabia, were shaped by the conventions of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The history enthralls Lisa and she shares it with her tour groups.

Instead of taking travelers to the Coliseum and the Vatican, Lisa guides them along waterways and lush scenic spots that inspired famous artists and builders, showing how the aesthetics of the Eternal City have stirred the emotions of the greatest thinkers, poets and artists, from Pliny to Dante to Michelangelo. Secret Gardens Italy tours include visits to cloisters, villas, palaces, castles and, of course, ruins.

We asked Lisa questions about visiting Italy, visiting gardens, and the benefits of gardening—whether you live near the Mediterranean or Lake Michigan.

When and how did you get interested in gardening? Well, gardening interests goes hand-in-hand with culinary interests, and my grandparents were Italian immigrants, and really loved food and meal time. They grew much of their own food in a small city yard in Michigan. As conventional as the front yard was, the back yard was intensely planted with fruit trees and annual Italian vegetables, which were mostly long-store varieties, like Annurche apples, and their basement cantina was full after the fall harvest. It was four seasons of great eating.

I started my own garden when my husband and I bought our first house in Bucktown. After the children were born, and as we were spending more time in the yard, the “garden project” intensified. Once they could walk, they would go outside to snack since we had started gardening with vegetables.

Why do you enjoy gardening and why might other people want to try it? The photosynthesis cycle of plants uses all the wastes (CO₂, nitrates and other salts) produced by the metabolism of animals, and vice versa. So plants and animals need each other for an environment healthy for both. So, the more gardens, the better for the planet.

Nature’s cycles, which you can easily see in the life of an annual plant, are needed touchstones in our busy lives, like exercise and fresh air.

A healthy garden is also aesthetic—and beauty is inspiring. Gardening needs creativity, discipline, patience, discrimination. It is also friendly, since you contribute beauty to, and improve the health of, the community you live in.

Is Chicago a good place to get involved in gardening? Chicago is a rigorous climate and the gardeners who are successful in Chicago are very accomplished!

Additionally, there are committed and talented municipal landscape professionals in Chicago who research, cultivate, and build community support for gardens, which they plant for public enjoyment and benefit. Even the highway wildflower planting programs, for example, start with considerable research—what noxious weeds to strip, what open-pollinated plants to choose, water delivery engineering, etc. The community garden program (where residents in a neighborhood plant plots on community land) is well-developed and supported. The Chicago Foundation, at least in the nineties, offered resources for beautification projects through the schools.

What do you love about Roman gardens? The open space in Rome has always been precious. Two thousand years ago, when it was the center of the Western world, Rome had the same population as today. Between then and now, there have been many invaders and much war destruction, many forms of government, absolute wealth and absolute poverty. It took a lot of effort to preserve and maintain green zones.

Some of the gardens we visit in my tour groups are almost as old as Rome. The dedication that has gone into preserving them, which has benefited tens of millions of residents, and hundreds of millions of visitors, through the millennia of cataclysmic change, is still evident in the current corps of municipal and private gardeners here.

An invitation to visit a garden was always a privilege, and so the most important people in Rome’s history were guests in these precious and protected spaces. Guests today invited into Rome’s gardens get a sense of place as well as of history, and at least at these tourist hotspots you don’t need to stand in any lines, making garden tours one of the most pleasant ways to tour Rome.

Who’s your typical tour customer? The kind of person that comes on my tour is the kind of person that is very comfortable when they’re invited somewhere, and someone who can’t stand standing in lines to get in. He or she is a traveler who wanders outside the typical tourist loop. Secret Gardens Italy is for people who want to be in a beautiful space, and want to hear history told as a sort of historical novel, from knowledgeable, competent people who want you to have a great time.

If you are interested in learning more about Secret Gardens Italy half-day, full-day and week-long tours, visit secretgardensitaly.com.

Suggested Reading

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, by Tracy DiSabato-Aust

A must-have reference book for novices and advanced gardeners alike with coverage on everything you’d want to know about perennial plants.

The Gardener’s Palette—Creating Color in the Garden, by Sydney Eddison

Learn how to bring garden colors together artistically.

A Guide to Happy Family Gardening, by Tammerie Spires

Ideas and tips for gardening with your children as well as family gardening stories and recipes.

A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, by the American Horticultural Society

A must-have reference book that covers over 20,000 plants around the world.

Wonders of the Winter Landscape: Shrubs and Trees to Brighten the Cold-Weather Garden, by Vincent A. Simeone

Let this book help you create the perfect winter wonderland garden.

University of Illinois Horticulture Extension

web.extension.uiuc.edu/state/hort.html

An online gardening bible you’ll want to bookmark, whether you’re master gardener or just a daydreamer. The program also offers a wide variety of classes and ways to get involved in community gardening projects.

Get Inspired at These Renowned Local Gardens

These gardens offer more than meets the eye. Check out their websites for a wealth of gardening guidance and local gardening tips, and information about gardening classes for children and adults. 

Chicago Botanic Garden

Glencoe, Ill.

chicagobotanic.org

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park

Grand Rapids, Mich.

meijergardens.org

What’s Fresh Near You?

We eat strawberries and asparagus in the winter without thinking twice about what it takes to get this food to our plate from places like Chile and the Netherlands. Shipping produce around the globe causes global warming and air pollution, and wastes fuel. Choosing to eat locally and seasonally is easy with nrdc.org/health/foodmiles. The Natural Resources Defense Council lets you enter the season and state and find out what fruits and veggies are in season.

Gardening Movies

-Saving Grace

-Greenfingers

-Edward Scissorhands

-Adaptation

-Little Shop of Horrors

-The Secret Garden

-Bed of Roses

-Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

-Green Card

-Enchanted April

Learn more about gardening with these websites:

organicgardening.com

gardendigest.com

thegardenhelper.com

garden.lovetoknow.com

garden.org

marthastewart.com/gardening