Gardens of Tuscany & Umbria
Autumn is when both Italian gardens and countryside give everything back. We walk it, talk it and taste it for a week, and you come home looking at your own patch with new eyes.
About this tour
Spend a week with me and photographer Sarah Cuttle at Villa Pia, in the little hill village of Lippiano on the border of Umbria and Tuscany, at the most generous time of the gardening year. This is an autumn retreat built around gardens, landscape and the harvest, and I co-host it with my friend Sarah. We visit some wonderful gardens, walk the countryside around the villa, and spend unhurried days in the hill-towns of Cortona and Pienza. There are talks and proper question-and-answer sessions from me, photography workshops with Sarah, and plenty of time simply to relax, swim and eat extremely well. The walking is easy to moderate, in towns and on country paths.
Garden highlights
- La Foce - the height of Italian style
- Villa Trecci - a garden for the future
- Archeologia Arborea - heritage fruit orchard
Destination highlights
- Lippiano and the countryside around Villa Pia
- The ancient walled town of Anghiari
- Cortona with its spectacular views
- Pienza and the magnificent Val d'Orcia
- The autumn harvest of a local grower
- Chestnut groves and bringing in the crop
- Visit to a traditional olive oil producer
Booking details
What you'll learn
Discover how the great gardens we visit, La Foce in particular, refect their landscape and the seasons of the year. We reveal the ways in which the harvest is celebrated and preserved in this beautiful part of Italy. A talk from me on where our garden plants actually come from, and how knowing that enables you to get the most from them in your garden. A talk and open question-and-answer session on gardening in a changing climate, with practical things you can do at home. Photography workshops with Sarah Cuttle, with individual help to get better pictures of plants and gardens whatever camera you use, even a phone.
Gardens you'll visit
La Foce
La Foce is a masterclass in Tuscan garden-making: elegant terraces, clipped hedges, and long, cinematic views into the Val d’Orcia. Designed with a painter’s eye and a gardener’s discipline, it blends structure with softness with cypresses, roses, and stone steps guiding you onward. It inspires by feeling timeless, calm, and beautifully lived-in.
Villa Trecci
Villa Trecci’s garden near Montepulciano feels like Tuscany distilled: sun-warmed terraces, fragrant herbs, and planting that frames wide vineyard views. It’s inspiring because it marries relaxed, lived-in beauty with thoughtful structure, inviting you to slow down, notice colour and texture, and see how a garden can belong to its landscape.
Archeologia Arborea
In autumn, Archeologia Arborea near Città di Castello comes alive with fruit, scented orchards, and the quiet satisfaction of harvest. This living archive rescues rare Italian varieties through grafting, growing, and sharing. It’s inspiring because biodiversity feels tangible – seen in colour, felt in abundance, and tasted in every apple and pear.
Beyond the gardens
Autumn here is as much about the harvest as the borders. We call on a local grower putting their summer crops by for winter, walk a chestnut grove, and visit an olive oil producer at pressing time. At the award-winning Archeologia Arborea we see an orchard given over to old, almost-lost fruit varieties. Add the medieval streets of Cortona, the long views over the Val d’Orcia from Pienza, and the easy rhythm of Villa Pia itself, with all meals and drinks included, and it is a proper holiday as well as a garden week.
If a week of good gardens, good walking and very good food in the Italian autumn sounds like your sort of thing, do come and join Sarah and me. Register your interest with me here and I will keep you posted, and when you are ready the booking is handled by Villa Pia.
Previous departures
A few moments from garden tours in Tuscany & Umbria
