The Italian Garden!

The Italian Gardens at Biltmore were gorgeous. These beautiful hanging vines gave much needed shade to this bright sunny area of the estate. The benches hugged the very very high concrete walls which separated The Italian Garden from other gardens at Biltmore.

Here in the Italian Garden sit several lily ponds. In this image, the large plant sitting above the water in the upper left background is Papyrus (something I had to look up to identify), but I think the real showstopper in this image has to be the huge Victoria Water Lilies you see in the foreground. Aren't they just gorgeous? In the background around the statute are orange and yellow varigated Cannas and to the far left is a Purple Hardy Waterlily. It is a feast for the eyes everywhere you looked around The Italian Gardens.

This beautiful water lily is a yellow Mexican Water Lilies. I wanted to share this image mostly because I really like all of the interesting water plants and vegetation growing around the Mexican Water Lily. In the upper portion of the image, the red and green plant floating on the water is called a Mosaic Plant. It took some doing to identify it but finally I found a website that had photos of many images featured in lily ponds.

The Italian Garden was absolutely the most gorgeous place. It was high noon when I visited with the sun glaring straight down and the temperature was around 90 degrees so I did a fair amount of sweating just to get some of these images. But it was fun regardless. It felt so surreal just walking around it. This garden, as well as the gardens and parks on the estate, were designed by Frederick Olmsted, the same gentleman who designed Louisville's beautiful parks, along with his architect, Richard Morris Hunt. Olmsted's inspiration for The Italian Garden was derived from chateaus he visited while traveling throughout France. Here is a closeup of the Cannas.

I absolutely love this next flower. The huge leaves with the tiny center are amazing. They are Lotus Nelumbo Nucifera which again took me a while to identify. This is its seed head which I guess may have already exspunged its seeds.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. The weather here is fantastic (finally) after the heat wave that lasted non-stop for nearly a month. ENJOY!