When Italian architect Maria Meratti began building herself a home on the northern coast of Sardinia, she knew straight away that she wanted local landscape designer and plantsman Marco Scano to design her garden.
Maria had worked with Marco on a previous project, and loved his naturalistic planting style and intuitive understanding of Mediterranean plant communities.
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This naturalistic feel was exactly what she wanted to connect the former farm, Borgo Lianti, to the spectacular coastal landscape overlooking the Maddalena archipelago. Her plan was to transform the 300-year-old farmhouse into a family home, while adding stylish holiday accommodation in the form of a series of new stone buildings, built in the traditional local style, and two apartments with sea views that would sit below a new swimming-pool terrace.
In this popular corner of Sardinia, it’s become common to see manicured lawns and English- style gardens, kept green with irrigation systems that are surely unsustainable in an area where temperatures can soar to well above 40oC in summer, and where the average annual rainfall is only 700mm.
Marco’s planting philosophy and design style differs radically from this approach. Instead, he works with the natural life-cycle of Mediterranean plants, embracing summer dormancy – not something generally practiced by designers in Sardinia – to create gardens that look impressive in high summer, and blend effortlessly into the local landscape.
On his own plot on the island, Marco experiments with a palette of Sardinian, South African and Australian plants, working towards his PhD from the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, under Professor James Hitchmough and Dr Elisa Olivares. He defines his approach as “ecological planting”, based on the principles of a designed community, where local character and sense of place is respected and native species embraced.
For this project, Maria asked for a nuanced version of native planting that would require only minimal watering, and Marco looked to the nearby coastal dunes for inspiration. These are primarily dominated by Armeria pungens and Helichrysum italicum subsp. microphyllum, but he also added plants and shrubs from similar climates.
“A longer period of interest in summer is achieved with the introduction of few non-native species, such as Watsonia borbonica subsp. ardernei and Anigozanthos flavidus,” he explains. “Re-seeding is also an important part of the long- term plant strategy, enabling regeneration. The maintenance regime includes hard-pruning (even coppicing) the shrubs, simulating the natural effect of wind, fire or grazing by wild goats.
Keeping the shrubs pruned also prevents the herbaceous planting from being out-competed.” Maria encouraged Marco to experiment as “wildly as possible” with the plant material and to encourage self-seeding throughout the garden, with one caveat: that planting should include only her favourite colours – whites, blues and greens – with absolutely no yellows, oranges, reds, purples or pinks. But she’s now sanguine that a few banned colours have crept in. “It is funny how a strong and stubborn mind such as mine can change when working with a skilled plantsman,” she says.
The garden around the newly built stone holiday houses offers views of the nearby coast framed by multi-stemmed wild olive trees
As part of the design brief, Maria also asked Marco for ideas to help prevent the strong winds at Borgo Lianti (lianti is the local name for the easterly Levante wind that blows across Sardinia) from blowing the existing topsoil towards the buildings. His solution was to use a local gravel as the planting medium, which also means that guests can easily walk through the planting.
The garden divides into two main areas. The first, around the stone holiday houses, offers views of the nearby coast framed by the multi-stemmed wild olive trees. In this area, Marco has used taller plantings with loosely grouped, resilient, native evergreen shrubs, such as Phillyrea angustifolia, that can withstand the coastal conditions. These will eventually be pruned into shapes that simulate the effect of natural wind pruning.
Maria encouraged Marco to experiment as “wildly as possible” with the plant material and to encourage self-seeding
The area is dotted with several lavenders, including Lavandula dentata ‘Ploughman’s Blue’, that are all reliable re-seeders. Also prominent is the compact evergreen sub-shrub Senecio vira-vira, with silvery, filigree foliage and small, button-like, pale-yellow flowers. Its silvery hummocks re contrasted with bursts of deep blue from sea lavender (Limonium perezii) and the delicate blue flowers of Salvia namaensis (a plant native to South Africa). Bringing height to this area is the tree mallow (Malva subovata), a semi-evergreen sub-shrub that flowers throughout the winter months and into early summer.
To add some drama to the planting, Marco has included the striking Ferula arrigonii. Endemic only to Sardinia and nearby Corsica, this giant of a plant grows up to 1.4m in height, bursting into fine-green clouds of striking filigree foliage and topped by rounded yellow umbels. It is summer dormant so all this of this drama happens during spring.
Maria envisaged Borgo Lianti as a place of tranquillity and comfort, where guests would feel they were immersed in a natural, wild world
The second main garden area is on a lower level, linked to the rest of the garden by a gently graded, gravel slope. It sits in front of the two apartments and maintaining sea views from this garden was paramount in Maria’s plans, so the planting here is limited to low-growing, coastal prairie planting that includes Armeria pungens to create a link to the nearby dunes, and Teucrium marum with highly scented foliage and pink flowers. Limonium perezii, which is repeated throughout this area, creates a link to the taller planting elsewhere in the garden, and as it tolerates occasional waterlogging, it has proved useful in this lower space where soil tends to retain more water than expected.
When she set out to create the holiday location at Borgo Lianti, Maria envisaged it as a “remote nest”, a place of tranquillity and comfort where guests would feel as though they were immersed in a natural, wild world. “It should be a place where sounds, colours and shades of nature surround you and envelope you in an embrace,” she says. Having spent time there, I can confidently say that thanks in no small part to Marco’s exquisite planting, Maria has totally succeeded in achieving her dream.
In brief
- Name Borgo Lianti.
- What A holiday resort with a naturalistic garden inspired by the surrounding landscape. Where Sardinia, Italy.
- Size 1,000 square metres.
- Soil Mainly sandy with crushed granite and some pockets of clay.
- Climate Mediterranean with temperatures of more than 40oC in summer and very little rainfall. Hardiness zone USDA 9b.
Useful information
Find out more about staying at Borgo Lianti at lianti.it and follow Marco Scano on Instagram @m.scano
8 key plants at Borgo Lianti
1 Pelargonium laevigatum
2. Malva subovata
3. Limonium perezii
4. Lavandula dentata
5. Watsonia borbonica subsp. ardernei ‘Arderne’s White’
6. Hyparrhenia hirta ‘Rena Bianca’
7. Senecio vira-vira
8. Eriogonum giganteum
*Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. †Hardiness ratings given where available.