Draw inspiration from a great teacher. And treasure it, rearrange it maybe doing a garden project that many years ago might have seemed ment clear and straightforward as to be almost disarming. Yeah, because if there is a common trait that emerges from the immense and varied work of the British landscape architect and garden designer Russell Page (1906-1985) The simplicity is certainly his lively background, word of Paolo Pejrone, his great student and ideal Italian heiress.

Russell Page as a child did not like going to school, wear uniforms and be confined in a building. Featuring a great artistic sensibility only dreamed of a painter. His education began as a gardener at fourteen, when for the first time took care of a bell jar purchased at a country fair: he learned to understand the nature and needs, reading too many books of horticulture. As a boy he worked in several gardens in the summer, he move to England from Paris to complete his studies as a painter and art form.

Meanwhile, he met André de Vilmorin, whose family traded plants and seeds, and he revive his passion for working in the garden. Back in England, was in 1932 that was a decisive encounter, The county Henry Bath asked him to intervene on its magnificent park surrounding the house, Longleat House, an Elizabethan house in Wilthshire. Since then Russell Page is dedicated entirely to the design of gardens, working with Geoffrey Jellicoe, one of the best known landscape artists of the 1900.

The book of The Gardens of Russell Page is the first complete monograph, accompanied by 225 illustrations, traces the artistic development and the whole career of English teacher who has designed gardens throughout the world. After his debut in England and Europe – from Belgium to Switzerland, Italy, Spain (including the gardens of Villar Perosa and Villa Frescot owned by the Agnelli family) – Page created and shaped green spaces to the Middle East, India and the Americas, facing reality and always different climates. For his clients, wealthy clients and refined, redesigned and decorated the exterior of luxurious residences and villas.

Views wide, stretches of water, paths, hedges and steps, but also big lawns, rose gardens and colorful flowers combined with wisdom. However, the passion of Russell Page was water and when he found, to take his creche obtaining lakes or streams in the countryside. His great teaching is to consider the garden as a changing body, that both commitment and constant care. And indeed, as he said: ” A few years of neglect and only the skeleton of a garden can be traced “