I had not seen Alessandro in about fifteen years, even though for a time he dated my historical best friend, Anna, in Florence and they have remained good friends to this day. Anna has kept me abreast of his general doings and goings on over the years, but I had no idea that, 1) he speaks near-perfect English and 2) in addition to being one of Italy’s top-ranked gardeners, he is also a writer.
On a recent trip to the U.S. to promote his book and re-establish some of his connections, he graciously agreed to meet with me at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx and gave me a charming interview. Here is the first part of the interview, with some photos of the gardens he has worked in.

New York Botanical Garden

• Alessandro-Tombelli-18-minsAlessandro-Tombelli-part-I-11-mins

Ilaria: I’m here with my friend Alessandro Tombelli, whom I’ve known for at least 20 years or something like that, and he’s from Florence, as am I. He is an extremely talented and well regarded in international circles gardener. Recently he decided to write a memoir called The Garden Connection: Life and Adventures of a Tuscan Gardener. As I understand it’s a combination of a personal memoir and a professional memoir, is that right?
Alessandro: It is.
Ilaria: Okay, so, Alessandro, tell me a little bit about the genesis of the book. Why did you decide to write it, how long did it take you…? Walk me through the process.
Alessandro: I decided to write this book a few years ago, when I was in Texas. Thanks to my garden connections it happened that I was in Texas, working with a landscape architect from Dallas, and I got involved in all these travels and big projects in the area, and I was thinking about how a few years before I was in Italy, I was in Florence, doing some gardening in these historical gardens. And then I was projected in these big, big goings on in Dallas, Texas. I thought, well, you know, this would be a nice story. It would be a nice story for a book. And all the travels I’d done between and all the people I met. I was there because I met somebody, and I met somebody through somebody else. So there was a real garden connection.
Ilaria: That’s great. And between the time that you first thought of writing the book and the time you wrote it, what happened? Why did it take you several years to actually start writing it?
Alessandro: Well, it happened because I’d been thinking for so long but I was not brave enough to write it. And also you have to concentrate on writing. I remember when I was thinking about this book, when I was taking notes, I had some ideas… Oh, this would be a nice idea for my next book. But I kept it for years before I decided to write it. And one day I wrote something like maybe ten pages, and I kept it maybe for a year or two, I don’t remember exactly. And it happened that I was in North Carolina once, and I was taken to a readers’ group, and when I realized that I said, “Oh, listen, I’ve written something. I have ten pages of my book.”
Ilaria: Quote, unquote.
Alessandro: And this friend said, “Oh, you should bring it and read it.” So I had my ten pages saved on a thumb drive, so I printed them out, I took them to this reading group, and everybody was listening. They said, “Alessandro, we like it, you should write this book.” I said, “Come on, I’m just a beginner. Maybe I should have a ghost writer, someone who writes for me.” Because I’m not a writer, I’m not an author. And they said, “No, you have to write it down.” And my friend, this friend who brought me there, she was…she is a writer, she’s an author. And she said, “If you write the book I’ll edit it for you.”
Ilaria: Wow.
Alessandro: So that was a big kick. So I came back home and after a few months, we corresponded, you know, asking if she was serious about it. And she was committed to doing it.
Ilaria: That’s a very big commitment.
Alessandro: Yeah. And she had no idea, poor Jack, how big a job she was going to do for me. Because I do speak a little English, but my written English was terrible. Anyway, I spent one summer, I was home in my little apartment in Florence, and I started writing. Spending like six, eight hours per day, because I was committed to do it. I had to do it. And she said, “Alessandro, you must finish it by the end of August, let’s say.” So I did it.
Ilaria: And how long did it take you altogether?
Alessandro: Altogether a couple of months.
Ilaria: That’s not long at all.
Alessandro: Yeah.
Ilaria: That’s wonderful.
Alessandro: And many things happened in between. I mean, the computer crashed once, so I had to rewrite part of the book because I lost everything. And a few other things. But anyway, I did it.
Ilaria: It’s so funny to see this: “San Donato in Collina and England.” [Come dire, Compiobbi e New York.
Alessandro: No, fa ridere, eh.] It’s very funny. I tried to put some humor in it.
Ilaria: You know what’s so funny is that I relate to this so well. Because this is my life. I’m half Florentine and half New Yorker, and I can relate… and when I was little I lived on a farm, you know, where I picked the grapes and the olives…
Alessandro: So you know what I’m talking about.
Ilaria: …and the chestnuts. You know, all that stuff.
Alessandro: Were you there in 1985 when the big chill came?
Ilaria: I was. Oh, yes. When all the olive trees died.
Alessandro: They died. I remember at that time, I was not really involved in agriculture then, or horticulture either. But I remember the countryside around Florence had changed completely. Because if you look at Florence from the hills… Well, Florence or the Tuscan countryside… you have this kind of silver gray of the olives.
Ilaria: Of course, I know exactly what you mean, that silvery color.
Alessandro: The season after that big chill was brown. It was awful, awful.
Ilaria: I know, it was so shocking. All that snow. I had a Vespa then. It was buried under the snow, I mean completely buried, for three weeks. When finally the snow melted and I could get my Vespa out of there, I kicked it to start it, and the metal pedal [la leva della messa in moto, fatta di ghisa], it just broke in two from the freezing cold. It was so cold. The first few days there were no buses, because Florence was not equipped. Florence is not equipped to deal with that kind of snow.
Alessandro: Nowadays it’s still not.
Ilaria: Yeah. But it never used to happen like that.
Alessandro: No, it was a special year.
Ilaria: And I had to go everywhere on foot. I had to walk everywhere. I lived in, near via dello Statuto, in via Paoletti, and I had to walk from there to the University… which at least then the University was in Centro and not out in the middle of nowhere where it is now. So it was within walking distance but it took me three-quarters of an hour to go to school every day. Wow. So tell me a little bit about the book.
Alessandro: So the book starts about my life in Florence, the beginning of my horticultural interests, some friends, some private life, people that I met at that time, people who made me to be as I am now. And then from the time I spent in England. It was the year 1987 when I decided to spend some time in England. So I moved there and I worked for one year in a very important garden called Wisley Garden. And there the horticultural world opened for me. It was a revelation, you know. “Oh, I see what gardening is now.” It was not just for the plants, for the garden, but also the people. So I met all the gurus at that time of the English international gardening. People that I had never heard of before. And you know, together with the other students we were going to meetings, we were going to see gardens during the weekend. So it was an amazing year for me. So back from that time in England, when I was in Italy, I was a bit shocked, you know, because from the highest level of horticulture in the world, you go back to Italy, back home, and you do nothing like that. So I was doing some little gardens here and there, but nothing very important. So I spent a couple of years, I was quite depressed. And I wanted to go back to England, I wanted to go back somewhere else. I was thinking about Australia, I was thinking about South Africa, but nothing happened, until I had the opportunity to work in a rather well known garden in Tuscany. It’s called La Foce. So I was able to work in this place. La Foce is a garden in Tuscany. It’s in the Val d’Orcia, the Siena province, and it’s one of the most beautiful gardens in Tuscany, nowadays. So I became the head gardener, and there again I was happy. Because after my time in England I could do some practice. So I was involved in the restoration of the garden, in the upkeep of it, and I was absorbed in all these beautiful things I was looking at, you know there were concerts in the villa, nice people, interesting people, riding horses. So many things, it was really one of the best times of my life. And that opened another door. La Foce opened the door to Villa I Tatti, which is another important villa in Florence, which is owned by Harvard University.
Ilaria: Of course.

La Foce

I Tatti #1

I Tatti #2

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