Italy's private gardens : an inside view

Helena Attlee and her photographer husband Alex Ramsay have been visiting Italian gardens, photographing them and writing about them, for two decades.

In recent years Helena has been leading garden tours to Italy, arranging for clients to enjoy lunch with garden owners, chat with gardeners and discuss designs with landscape architects.

These behind-the-scenes glimpses are the inspiration for Italy's Private Gardens, a book built around conversations with people intimately associated with some of Italy's most intriguing private gardens.

Owners, designers and gardeners talk freely about their personal experiences, the problems they have faced and overcome.

Each garden is introduced with a brief history. With stunning photographs taken by Alex Ramsay, Italy's Private Gardens takes in 19 gardens in Piedmont, the Veneto, Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria and, unusually, Sicily, and includes interviews with Arabella Lennox-Boyd at Palazzo Parisi, Jane and Francesco da Mosto at their retreat in the Venetian lagoon, Principessa Maria Carla Borghese at Il Biviere and Gil Cohen and Paul Gervais at Villa Massei.