Isola Madre – Mountains, Seaside And Relaxation

Half the fun of visiting Isola Mad re lies in the approach. The great passenger boats rumble across the lake towards the island, slackening their speed as they near the landing stage. This gives pleasure-seekers on the foredeck the opportunity to read the composition in front of them. The villa, large and plain, presents its rectangular front at the top of the picture, thinly screened by palm trees, oleanders (Nerium) and climbers. Below it, several big terraces descend towards the visitor, one of them covered entirely, like a green render, in the foliage of the creeping fig (Ficus pumila).

But best of all is the vegetation scattered along the rocky shore, where romantically tilted outcrops of slaty grey rock sprout curtains of pink and green, with the giant rosettes of variously coloured Agave hanging out over the lapping waves. As an overture, this is hard to beat, and, like all good overtures, it sets the tone for what is to come. The crown of a silver-grey gum or Eucalyptus leans elegantly over the staircase as the visitor climbs on to the first terrace past massed bedding, always of the first quality, and steps into this floral wonderland through the pedimented arch.

The whole island is taken up with the garden and house. Nothing could be more different from the atmosphere on the sister island of Isola Bella, just a short distance away. There, all is splendour, nobility, state and parade. This, by contrast, is carpet slippers and afternoon tea. Both are unmissable, but the order in which they should be seen is quite clear. Some visitors feel that the crush and blaze of Isola Bella is such a knockout blow that it quite does them in, so they skip Isola Madre for a lie down in a darkened room. How wrong they are. What is seen now in a walk around Isola Madre is the result of a series of modifications over many centuries.

The lasting impression is of a richly planted ornamental garden in the English taste, laid out like soft furnishing over and around a thoroughly Italian framework of steps, clean lines and regular rhythms. The combination is a very happy one, with neither format quite gaining the upper hand, so that honour is retained on both sides. Above all, in this happy mingling of contrasting styles, the real victor is the view, framed at intervals across the dark blue lake to mountains, promontories, other islands and lakeshore promenades. It is easy enough here to find a quiet corner to contemplate the scenery and gather thoughts.

The island is on at least its third name so far. In the ninth century, it was named after San Vittore, a big saint in these parts, whose ancient chapel, now lost, stood here. A century later it was changed to Isola Maggiore, the ‘bigger’ or ‘main’ island, reasonably enough in comparison with the others. It has only been Isola Madre, the ‘mother island’, since 1713, and nobody really knows why. The island came into the Borromeo family in 1501, when Lancillotto Borromeo added it to the family’s possessions.

By 1542, it was covered with 550 grapevines (Vitis), with smaller plantations of walnuts (Juglans), figs (Ficus), olives (Olea), chestnuts (Castanea), cherries (Primus), quinces (Cyclonia), pomegranates (Punica) and apples (Mains). This interesting combination of fruits of both north and south shows that the accommodating qualities of the lake’s climate were already appreciated. Before long, the family realized this might be an ideal spot for a summer residence with ornamental grounds, so that by 1568 the owner has ‘built a sumptuous palace, and ornamented it with an agreeable garden’. Pheasants make their first appearance in 1591; decorative terracing is added five years later. Already, by 1600, things are beginning to look the way they do now.

In the seventeenth century, all the action was concentrated on the big push of the Isola Bella project, and Isola Madre was left to its rural seclusion. Occasionally, it is mentioned in passing, and we realize that this apparent rustication is not quite what it seems: Conte Federigo Borromeo was accused in 1769, for example, of having a secret and inexhaustible source of wealth, so great was his expenditure on the estate, though this may have been idle flattery. The more telling remark seems likely to have been Carlo Amoretti’s in 1794, when he observed that the gardens were subdivided into groves of wood, collections of trees, and orchards. This steady evolution from a productive estate to a pleasure ground can easily be felt by any modern visitor.

The final chapter of this extended makeover was written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Just as Isola Bella’s character was gradually adapted at that time from a ‘stone garden’ of grey and green to a more varied backdrop of planting in tune with the rise of Romanticism, so Isola Madre was finally transformed into a plantsman’s paradise, in which the foreign visitor could step ashore and imagine himself — like Joseph Banks in the South Seas – walking through groves of unfamiliar trees and shrubs with exotic birds wandering innocently across his pioneering path.

This new style, suited to the changed mentality which valued individual specimens over the pictorial scenery favoured by the previous generation, was begun under the expert management of the Rovelli family, a famous name in these parts. Two brothers, Alessandro and Giuseppe, began their great work here in 1802, and the family remained successively head gardeners until 1851. Thereafter, they ran a highly successful nursery at Pallanza on the nearby shore. The island route takes you to the house. When I first saw it some years ago, it was something of a surprise.

In the courtyard immediately in front stood an immense Kashmir cypress (Cupressus cashmeriana), so vast that the enormous house behind it was completely invisible. This famous tree arrived as a seed from a Borromeo-sponsored plant-hunting expedition in 1862. It is easy enough to imagine its elegant young form in the centre of the courtyard, with its weeping, blue-green branches the very cynosure of mid 19th-century garden taste. Nobody could have expected that it would achieve such monumental dimensions, still less that it would retain its unique appearance.

It was a famous object and the pride of this place. But the great storm of 2006 blew it flat. It might have been worse, because if the Kashmir cypress had landed on the house, that would have been that.The monster lay on the ground like Goliath, surrounded by cries of disbelief and despair. But then Prince Borromeo decided it could be saved, lying there, like many trees do when blown over, attached by a hinge of the rootplate on one side. So he hired a helicopter, which attached a cable to the fallen tree and pulled it upright.

Further cable-braces were then stretched out on all sides as if it were an enormous flagpole. Now this is all very splendid and marvellous, not to say unheard-of, but my immediate reaction was that it would all end in failure, since conifers cannot regenerate their severed limbs. However, as the years go by, the tree has gradually regained its glory, and I am obviously wrong. Having said that, all the steel cables are still in place, and it is difficult to imagine the day when they can safely be removed.

Rounding the house at this point, the visitor comes to one of the highlights of the garden – the little square flanked by the chapel and filled by an ornamental pond. They can look down from a staircase on to this elliptical pond, planted with multicoloured water lilies (Nymphaea), including some of the exotically coloured Latour-Marliac types, and edged with bedding of the kind that the Borromeo gardens do so well, whatever the season. Straight ahead is an iron pergola planted with wisteria in a style which could happen only in Italy: three cultivars – pink, white and the familiar blue – in broad stripes.

The effect is novel, and the scent in mid-spring overwhelming, as it drifts on the air. The chapel, built in 1858 and faced in terracotta panels, is a pretty thing, and still in use for family weddings and christenings. Joined on to it, but facing across the lake, is the former orangery, now, like so many of its kind, in use as a tea shop, in front of which chairs and tables are pleasantly shaded by a grove of bananas (Musa).

From here the visitor walks across the looming facade of the villa, festooned in late summer with curtains of bougainvillea. The bedding along its base is always magnificent and complements the lawns and those very palms which were first seen on arrival. At the end of this walk is a little showpiece, a collection of Protea, the national flower of South Africa, in pots. Overlooking them is a big maidenhair tree (Ginkgo), always a picture of health, as so many plants are here in this ideal climate.

The lawns and specimen trees and shrubs spread away in various directions beyond the house, continuing the giardino inglese impression which has been gathering on Isola Madre since the start of the nineteenth century. In modern times all this has been superintended by Gianfranco Giustina, head gardener here for more than thirty years. Since 2006, he has also been in charge, like a supreme allied commander, on Isola Bella. He sets the marvellous standard on these islands, and was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial Medal in 2014, when the appropriately named Jim Gardiner travelled from RHS Wisley to Pallanza to present it. When a garden is this good, everyone is happy!