What is your favourite kind of garden?

[Albion]

The mediterranean vegetation is formed of various levels:
1. maquis (between the beach and the inland)
2. pinewoods (at the shoulders of the maquis)
3. cultivated hills

Mediterranean maquis is a strip of vegetation that in mediterranean temperate areas grow between the sea and the inland. It is made mostly of shrubs and small dunes.

The autentic maquis looks like this.

I have found something similar to the mediterranean maquis in Australia, in the NSW, although the vegetation was exotic, but with a very similar shape.

The maquis is made only of shrubs. At the shoulders of the maquis you find the pinewoods.



And then the hills.

This are approximately the mediterranean landscapes. Consider that in Italy you find also the alpine and the appenninic landscapes/environment that are not mediterranean.

In the case of my region, after the pinewood (we don't have the maquis here or it is very limited) and the hills, you have the Appenninic woods made mostly of beech trees:

To go from the pinewood to the beech trees woods I need less than 40 minutes in my region. This is to give you an idea of the great variety of landscapes that you find in Italy.

To answer you, I think the photos you posted don't really look like a mediterranean maquis, but do have something mediterranean. I would say that you see something similar in the hilly strip, in some Italian countryside.

Ah, so it's a coastal landscape. Those pictures I posted were taken very far inland in the centre of England.
Around the rocky coasts in the west of the country we have shrubs growing along the edges, often on cliffs. There's no woods because they were cut down to make way for farmland and coniferous woodlands only occur in far northern England naturally (apart from the odd Juniper or Yew down south).


Rocky coast in the SW especially tend to be dominated by bell heathers and coastal plants and a few wild brassica species.

[Albion]

My fav is English cottage garden 'cause of the mixture of perennials and herbs. I love lavender....

Yes, I walk past a few houses where people grow that. In spring when that started growing again the smell came as a bit of a shock at first.


Regarding English and French garden designs, I have a bit of information here:

What is the Difference between an English Garden and a French Garden?

There are as many differences between and English garden and a French garden as there are similarities. They’re both founded on the principles of the original English garden which the Romans introduced to England upon their arrival in the 1st Century A.D. The English garden is a style of landscaping garden that was popular across the European continent. The French garden took its roots in the 16th Century with heavy influence from the Italian gardens of the time. The French garden is directly associated with Andre Le Notre.

English gardens were an attempt to blend into the natural landscape, growing a little on the wild side, while blending in romantic elements. Romantic elements were introduced in the 18th Century and included ponds or small lakes, bridges or long docks on the water, imitation ruins, and sculptures. “Chinese” pavilions are also commonly associated with an English garden. Each of the romantic elements in an English garden is incorporated into the foliage to enhance the wild look of the garden.

French gardens are also called formal gardens and are exactly that; formal. They follow very strict geometric lines. Plants are arranged so that they maintain the geometric and symmetric layouts. They are trimmed and pruned on a regular basis to keep them from obtaining that overgrown look, typical of an English garden. In larger gardens lanes or paths branch off from the center, which, according to tradition, is a building façade, going outward so visitors can stroll through each section. Lanes are often paved with gravel. French gardens traditionally include lawns for large scale gardens.

French gardens have their own romantic elements; however they borrow a lot from the English garden. Where an English garden may have a pond, the French garden will have a reflecting pool accented with fountains or sculptures and always following a geometric pattern. Large-scale French gardens will also have parterres. They are the construction around the plants and consist of stone or carefully maintained hedges to create symmetrical, or even geometrical, patterns. Claude Mollet is credited with the creation of the parterres.

If you’re looking to plant a garden and want a specific look, remember these basic pointers. French gardens are very geometric. The center should have some sort of façade and emanate outward. They are high maintenance but well worth the effort. If you’re after an English garden look, let your plants get a little wild looking, add at least one romantic element, and use foliage that naturally adds color to the landscape.

I think the English Garden is more of a cottage garden design where everything is quite informal whereas the French design is based on a potager type garden.

There's two types of English Garden in my opinion, one is the formal type found at manor houses and the other is the Cottage Garden style which sometimes looks like someone's thrown random seeds around.
Cottage Gardens are more about colour but provide some useful herbs and flowers for the house whereas English Gardens found at stately homes are more like a parkland and sometimes even have their own deer.
Lancelot "capability" brown and William Kent (who could be an ancestor of mine) were the main developers of the English style. Cottage Gardens are more an organic development.

English Gardens at stately homes:

An essential element is a grotto - a fake ruin, often either a folly (fake castle ruin) or something Roman.
The landscape should be fairly well wooded so make it look like the Ardenees or Wye Valley.




Spring bulbs are an essential part of an English garden - especially daffodils and snowdrops along with bluebells and pansies.



Cottage Garden:

I prefer our cottage gardens. It'd take a while for me to emulate one but it could be done.









I think they fell out of fashion for a while. They were associated with old women for a long time but have made a bit of a comeback. They never fully disappeared though.



I like some of the elements in it such as foxgloves and the flowers growing up walls. The whole thing with flowers growing up walls is common, a lot of people plant things like aubretia or saxifrages.
Saxifrages and sedums led to the development of the alpine gardens and rockeries I think.

I'd like to take a few elements from cottage gardens and make my mini-orchard a bit more diverse. It's a sea of green at the moment and needs flowers now all the spring ones are dying down.
There's cornflower and poppy seed in it which should be nice if it germinates. There's also foxgloves but they take two years.



The cottage garden developed out of the Middle Ages when cottagers / cotters would tend the fields of the feudal lord but maintain a garden attached to the house to grow herbs and useful flowers.
A lot of this disappeared with the industrial revolution as people were forced into towns but there's something of a revival going on at the moment in British food and uses of plants and garden design.

[Foxy]

Actually I listed only some classical types of gardens in the poll.
Some pics of the mediterranean gardens and terraces (I think Figuscarica will like): realizes a fusion between nature and architecture. To make it more coloured use also semi-tropical plants.

[Corvus]

My own. So a textbook rural central European garden. Today I mowed the lawn

[Foxy]

Here some pics of the 10 most beautiful Italian gardens of 2009

1. Garden of Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini (Ligury)



2. Giardino Giusti (Veneto)



3. Garden of Villa Gamberaia (Tuscany)



4. Garden Bardini (Tuscany)



5. Garden of Villa Lante a Bagnaia (Lazio)



6. Garden of Castle Ruspoli (Lazio)



7. Giardino di Ninfa (Lazio)



8. Garden of Reggia di Caserta (Campania)



9. Garden of Villa San Michele (Campania)



10. Garden of the Kolymbetra (Sicily)

[ficuscarica]

Sorry Italy, sorry England, against Provence gardens with their fairy-tale like vibe you loose.

[Albion]

Sorry Italy, sorry England, against Provence gardens with their fairy-tale like vibe you loose.

Nah, if I wanted a hacienda I'd be in Uruguay or Chile by now. (Yes, I have thought about it. )
Not Argentina!

[Aramis]

The Zen garden, or Japanese rock garden if you prefer, is my choice.

The Japanese rock garden (karesansui?) or "dry landscape" garden, often called a zen garden, creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully-composed arrangements of rocks, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water.[1] A zen garden is usually relatively small, surrounded by a wall, and is usually meant to be seen while seated from a single viewpoint outside the garden, such as the porch of the hojo, the residence of the chief monk of the temple or monastery. Classical zen gardens were created at temples of Zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan during the Muromachi Period. They were intended to imitate the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve an aid to meditation about the true meaning of life.[2]

[Nordish Persephone]

English- It feels like you are surrounded by a welcoming sea of beauty with the infusions of colors from the trees and flowers. It feels so dreamy and inspires wistful, creative visions and unites the concepts in your mind.

[PetiteParisienne]

English- It feels like you are surrounded by a welcoming sea of beauty with the infusions of colors from the trees and flowers. It feels so dreamy and inspires wistful, creative visions and unites the concepts in your mind.

I agree. English gardens allow you to lose yourself in Romantic fantasies and dreams.