Designing a Destination in Italy
A working design adding new ideas to historical features
This week I am re-sharing our 2024 post about Trulli Trazzonara & the Puglia region of Southern Italy - where I happen to be celebrating my birthday. If you follow along on Substack Notes, I will be sharing snapshots of local food, plants & flowers over the next couple of weeks. Hope you all have a wonderful week & an opportunity to get out in the garden - Stefani
The Puglia region of Italy is referred to as the ‘heel of the boot’ and is currently surging in popularity for tourism and agriturism. The relatively wild and historically diverse area is steeped in unique culinary traditions and fantastical landscapes. It is here where most of the world famous olive oil and pasta that Italy is grown and produced.
Surrounded by olive groves, ancient vineyards, and rambling fruit orchards deep within the Puglia countryside is also where you will find Trulli Trazzonara, a 20 acre (8 hectares) olive farm and traditional trullo complex that my sister and I purchased in 2023.
We have learned a lot about this region, from exploring our local hill towns and farmer’s markets to the beaches, wineries and olive mills that pepper the bucolic countryside. And while not a full ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ movie experience, we have learned our fair share about restoring and preserving the unique architectual structure that can only be found in Puglia - the Trullo.
What is a Trullo? A trullo (plural: trulli) is a traditional dry-stone structure found primarily in the Puglia region of southern Italy. The term "trullo" comes from the Greek word "tholos," meaning "dome" or "rotunda," which reflects the characteristic conical roofs of these buildings above usually whitewashed walls, which helps to reflect the intense heat of the southern Italian sun. One of the popular theories behind the Trullo design is that, due to high taxes on property, the dry stacked stone roofs were able to be quickly disassembled when tax inspectors were in the area. By the 17th century, the use of trulli became more common, and they started to be seen as a cultural symbol of the region. Their unique appearance and historical significance led to a movement to preserve the buildings, and today many trulli are considered important historical sites and have been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996.
I am headed back to Puglia later this week with Rose from Morningsun Herb Farm & Alexis from Soul Food Farm to begin planning our 2025 Garden & Floral Retreats. We will be sharing more over the coming weeks about how to join us in Puglia for a slow travel experience with a focus on gardens & flowers. In the meantime, I thought I would start off by sharing about the property.
Soon after receiving the keys to Trulli Trazzonara, I brought my team from Homestead to start the garden design process. Located in the rustic country outside of Martina Franca, Trulli Trazzonara is home to 20 acres of olive groves & fruit orchards including plum, almond, medlar, pear, quince, cherry, apple and fig trees - with one of the largest swimming pools in the region. The immediate garden space around the trulli and pool has olives and fruit trees, but we wanted to expand upon this area and give a Homestead flourish. It is still a work in progress, but I thought it would be fun for Christian to share his experience visiting and working on the new garden design with you all here. (NB: The complex sleeps 15 and is available to rent from May until October!)
Christian
Garden design takes on many forms, and there are different solutions to each problem that a job presents. Designing around a lawn for a family with young children is a different experience than designing for the pollinator garden from the earlier substack. The project that we are focused on in this post is designing your boss’s garden in a country 6,000 miles away without speaking the native language (or the measurement system) to accompany the 500 year architectural novelty of the trullo. Good luck to me.
When we first arrived on site to digest the property and its surroundings, we were immediately taken by the natural beauty of the Apuglian countryside. Native oaks and mature olive trees were plentiful, piles of limestone boulders were at our disposal (free rocks, people!) for building traditional dry stacked stone walls, and, of course, there were the trulli!
Natural beauty aside, there were also some disparate elements on the property that needed to be brought together. There was a GIANT pool that just seemed to be floating out in the landscape, unrelated to any existing landscaping or element on the property. There was also a very lonely mature Canary Island Date Palm that needed some friends (palms around a pool is perfect, however just one doesn't really cut it). We also knew that a lot of features needed to be added to the property to curate the type of sanctuary we wanted it to be.
Integrating existing features
As stated above, the pool (and its surrounding travertine patio) is MASSIVE and wildly out of scale. Our method for addressing this was to incorporate broad strokes of repetitive planting as far as the eye can see. Near the pool, our method was to cool things down, as the light that reflected off the travertine patio was glaring. We achieved this by planting lots of heat and drought tolerant plants in shades of silver, grey, and blue. Broad swaths of Senecio mandraliscae (Blue Chalksticks), and tidy mounds of Santolina chamaecyparissus (Lavender cotton) are woven together to form a soothing groundcover. Cloud-pruned outcroppings of Teucrium fruticans (Bush germander) offer near-white mounds to compliment the Santolina. Bold Agaves are peppered amongst the ground cover to add texture and structure, and their icy blue tones also compliment the other shrubs and succulents. The lonely Canary Island Date Palm gets some companions in the form of Chamaerops humilis (Mediterranean Fan Palm), Cycas revoluta (Sago Palm) and Butia capitata (Pindo Palm). All of this served to turn the random Olympic lap pool into a nestled Italian oasis.
Off in the back 40, beyond the pool, we have designed a modern Mediterranean meadow. Bold yet soft, golden bands of Stipa tenuissima (a plant that has weed potential in California, but seems to be rather well behaved in the Mediterranean) undulate amongst ribbons of Muhlenbergia capillaris. Both shrug off the hot Italian sun and grace us in late summer and fall with a frothy explosion of blonde and pink inflorescences. Floral notes, in blue and purple tones, are represented with drifts of Perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian Sage) and Verbena bonariensis (Verbena on a Stick). Agaves and Palms occur amongst the grasses and flowers to draw your eye through the space and establish a connection to the pool planting. Yucca rostrata (Beaked Yucca) is planted amongst the grasses and mimics the palm-like form with ice blue heads of thin leaves set on top of stout trunks, while also providing a visual bridge to the Agaves.
Establishing striking plantings with a concentrated palette is a good way of making a space feel more vast and deliberate. The flowing grasses and flowers soften the hard edges while the cool blue tones of the succulents and Mediterranean plants cool down the reflected sun. As this is a vacation rental most of the year, this is the type of garden that must be graphically interesting from afar. Puglia is also primarily a warm weather retreat, and plants that are at their peak in the summer and fall are tantamount. As much as we love an intricate planting that lends itself to exploration and up-close interaction, this is largely a garden that is going to be viewed from the pool whilst sipping wine.
Adding and supporting features to the landscape
What does one want in a vacation property in the Mediterranean? Craggy old Olive trees and piles of giant rocks might be interesting to a rag tag group of landscapers, but what do the people want? After doing a little sleuthing on the internet and consulting with some locals who are also in the business of vacation rentals, it seemed to me that the property desperately needed a demographic identity and the amenities to match. Being Homestead Design Collective, we wanted this identity to be focused on growing food, cooking and wellness. We needed a massive kitchen area for cooking aficionados to gather. As you meander past the pool, into the "side yard", there will be a row of fragrant Citrus trees underplanted with bountiful Star Jasmine, with some wide steps leading you towards a rustic, wooden pergola covered in edible grape vines. There will be a large-format outdoor kitchen and a farm table able to serve up to twenty people. On one side, there will be built in, stuccoed seating for pre-dinner drinks or appetizers set under the dappled shade of a native oak tree. On the other will be a trullo-shaped pizza oven, gas grill, and open-flame rotisserie for cooking classes. This area is designed to be the beating heart of the property.
Beyond the kitchen area will be an edible garden. The nearby raised beds will be constructed from local stone and feature metal arches to grow Italian varieties of tomato that will be featured extensively in the meals prepared on site. In-ground, will be a grove of Pomegranate Trees interspersed with Prickly Pear Cactus. To ground the planting will be a hefty helping of Teucrium fruticans, cloud-pruned for a bit of continuity and refinement. A smattering of in-ground herbs will soften the planting and add a touch of whimsy.
Beyond the edible garden, the meandering path continues towards the site of the future bocce court surrounded by a bank of Echium candicans (Pride of Madeira) along with a hefty helping of Limonium perezii (Sea Lavender) and Erigeron karvinskianus (Santa Barbara Daisy). An existing tree line here of native Oaks, Olives and Figs will provide shade from the hot afternoon sun.
Past the bocce area, one arrives at an ancient stone foundation to.....something (no one is sure exactly what it was initially, but it is definitely very old and very cool). This will be now surround filled a wooden deck that will serve as an area for outdoor yoga. The repurposed stone foundation will be encircled by a native fruit tree orchard. Wildflowers will be allowed to flourish with an emphasis on spring bloomers to draw in the pollinators that will guarantee an ample supply of summer fruit.
We are very excited to begin our next Italian adventure. As the project develops further, we will make sure to keep you in the loop with various updates. In the interim, it is still a fabulously rustic, Italian experience and we invite you all to come and visit!
What a gorgeous villa!
I really love what you guys are doing here and the way you implement an edible garden. We all have to eat anyway and pick the fresh organic food right from the gardens is in my view the best way to go. To set your property up this way is really something I think is important for Puglia, to show the way forward in hospitality and regenerative tourism specifically. Thanks for leading the way and showing what is possible!