LIVING LEGACY

An 800-year-old Sicilian estate is home to an ever-evolving palette of enormous succulents, tropical foliage, and vividly-colored flowering plants

- Helena Attlee

San giuliano, the rose-coloured sicilian home and verdantgarden of Marquis giuseppe Paternò castello di san giuliano, was built in the fifteenth century on land that had been in the family for over 800 years. Today, it is one of sicily’s most exciting gardens, for although mature trees convey a sense of permanence, it is regularly reinvigorated with new ideas and planting schemes.

The marquis and his late wife Fiamma Ferragamo (best known as principal designer at her father salvatore Ferragamo’s shoe empire) spent 25 years creating the seven-acre garden. although it continues to evolve, the layout remains true to the original. There is a generous terrace in front of the house, an enviable collection of ornamental trees, a swimming pool and a large succulent and cactus bed at the entrance. In the nineties, the couple commissioned landscape architect olivia di collobiano to transform a walled orchard and a vegetable parterre into a lower garden known as the giardinetto.