The Mortella Gardens on Ischia

by guest contributor Debra Boraston, photos by John Ferro Sims

I am happy to welcome our good friends Debra and John to The Painted Palazzo. Debra tells the story of how British composer Sir William Walton (1902-1983) and his wife Susana, Lady Walton (1926-2010) created the Mortella Gardens located on the lovely island of Ischia near Naples. Debra worked closely with Lady Walton from 2001-2003 promoting the William Walton Centenary in the UK and her exhibition at the Chelsea Flower Show. Anglo-Italian photographer John Ferro Sims photographed La Mortella in the late 1980s for his “The Renaissnce of Italian Gardens” , one of the dozens of photography books he has published in his long career.

left to right: Fulvio, Debra, friend Alexandra, and John

The first time I visited La Mortella in 2001 I thought I was walking into paradise. It was a warm late spring evening at dusk when the taxi dropped me outside a simple gate on an ordinary street. Nothing could have prepared me for the tropical oasis that lay behind that gate. My senses were overwhelmed by sounds of splashing fountains and chattering cicadas, the scent of lush foliage and the balmy humidity of the Mediterranean. Towering palms, agaves and citrus trees bordered the torch-lit pathway which gently ascended to the house. But before I reached the house, an excited Lady Walton came hurrying down to meet me, as it happens by a special tree, the Gingko biloba (a species said to have existed unchanged for millennia). This, I discovered later, was where she always started her garden tours but I was already getting the full treatment. This was truly her kingdom

Lady Walton at the entrance to La Mortella

La Mortella was the home of the renowned British composer Sir William Walton and his Argentine wife, Susana, who devoted over 50 years to creating and nurturing this magical oasis. It is a spectacular sub-tropical garden hidden away in the hills behind the port of Forio on the volcanic island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. It has been open to the public since the early 1990s as a botanical garden and also a venue for classical music. It was named La Mortella after the indigenous myrtle bushes that grow abundantly among the rocks, practically the only plant growing in what was essentially a stone quarry in 1956 when the couple fell in love with the location and its view of the setting sun over the Mediterranean.

Following a whirlwind romance and extravagant wedding in Buenos Aires the couple spent only a short time living in London before William decided he needed a secluded place to finish writing his opera, Troilus and Cressida. He announced to his vivacious young wife that they would abandon the distractions of city life and find a place to settle in the Bay of Naples, a part of Italy he had fallen in love with many years before on visits with the eccentric Sitwell family who had “adopted” him in the 1920s and supported his early career as a composer.

Mount Epomeo, the island’s highest peak

William had his composing, but Susana knew that she too needed a project. She persuaded the eminent British garden designer, Russell Page, to come and design the split level garden that would become the heart of the estate. Page immediately recognized the drama of the underdeveloped site and envisioned a place of serenity to satisfy William’s needs. In three days he sketched a plan with instructions that he expected to keep Susana busy for the next decade. “Never plant one, plant a hundred” and “keep the great rocks free of vegetation so as not to lose their dramatic impact” were two of his most emphatic pronouncements.

His design incorporated a strong simple structure for the valley with a main vista stretching south towards Mount Epomeo, the highest peak on Ischia, and another axis at right angles. The volcanic soil provided the rich terrain for Mediterranean, Californian, South African and Australian plants and, under Susana’s stewardship (she became an excellent plantsman) the “hardscape” was softened and became a naturalistic garden of exotics and rarities with trees alternately providing shade and dappled sunlight. Over the years La Mortella became a true work of art - a combination of rigid geometry with exuberant and luxuriant planting and a wonderful setting for Walton’s music.

the house “a Minoan palace”

The position for the house was chosen halfway up the hill-built into the vertical rockface with a huge covered terrace overlooking the garden below. It took seven long years, not only to build the house, but also the terracing and pathways leading up to it. While William was closeted away in his music room, Susana and a local architect had the task of overseeing everything. William even bought her a book on plumbing which she diligently studied, becoming the plumbing designer for all future buildings on the estate. Built with thick stone walls of grey granite hewn from the site it was nicknamed la caserma (the barracks) by the locals on its completion in 1962. But the Waltons knew that in time it would be covered with creepers and disappear into the surrounding trees and greenery as originally intended.

On his second visit, 12 years after the first, Russell Page proclaimed the house a Minoan Palace and set to work on a planting scheme to balance the house with the garden. A strong visual foundation of giant leaf forms was now necessary, in colours of green, silver and grey with dynamic shapes ranging from spikes to umbrellas and fans. He was also able to install three majestic water jets into his original design of linking pools now that La Mortella was connected to the Naples water system.

A particularly gratifying result of the spray created by these splashing jets was to finally have a place for the majestic Colombian perennial Gunnera manicata to thrive, along with the now towering rainforest palms, tree ferns, magnolias and ancient rare species such as the famous dragon tree from the Canary Islands. Under this canopy the ground is covered with colocasias, bromeliads and caladiums offering vivid points of colour in a sea of lush green foliage.

Russell Page was inspired by the Islamic tradition of compartmentalised gardens with a lay-out of successive “outdoor rooms” Just as he created this in the valley with structure and planting, Susana continued the theme up the hillside. Page had suggested a location for the greenhouses for its uninterrupted view of the garden and the sunsets and it was these buildings that Susana modified in preparation for opening the garden to the public in 1991. These became a split level Orchid House, a home for her collection of enchanting orchids and many tiny iridescent humming birds, which reminded her of her childhood in Argentina. The adjoining “growing house” became the Tea Room where visitors could stop for refreshment and admire the view from the terrace.

the world’s largest waterlilies

Another important construction was the Victoria House, home to the world’s largest waterlily Victoria amazonica. Its huge pie plate-shaped leaves can grow up to 2.5m in diameter and the blooms up to 40cm. I remember Susana gleefully describing how a 24 hour pollination process sees Victoria not only change colour from white to crimson, but also from female to male!

In 2000 she brought a replica of the Victoria House to London for her first and only appearance as an exhibitor at the Chelsea Flower Show (she was always a regular visitor and purchaser of plants), with not only a waterlily seeded from the Ischia specimen, but also an array of rare tropical plants she had nutured at La Mortella, including carnivorous plants, aroids, epyphitic plants and exquiste orchids.

the crocodile pool

Further up the hillside the Upper Garden is not only another area of beauty and enchantment, but also a natural firebreak with a large reservoir masquerading as the Crocodile Pool and Cascade. For this project Susana was transported back to her early stone-breaking days and taught the builders how to break and move the rocks and exactly where and how to place them. In these pools, the Egyptian tropical waterlily, Nymphaea caerulea thrives, while the surrounding areas are covered with evergreen holm oaks, olive trees and a myriad of other Mediterranean plants.

William’s Rock

Higher still lies a secret oriental garden with a beautiful lotus pool bordered in the summer by elegant canna lilies and blue agapanthus, filling the air with heavenly scents. By the pool is a Thai Sala, an open-sided pavilion commissioned by Susana on a visit to her cousin in Bangkok where he was Argentine ambassador. Surrounded by bamboo, Japanese acers, and ferns, it is a place for rest and meditation.

The Thai Sala

After William’s death in March 1983 Susana carried out his wishes to intern his ashes in “William’s Rock” a monumental pyramid-shaped boulder that he had laid claim to when they first bought the land. Bathed in golden light as the sun sets, it is in contrast to the silvery adorments of “The Nymphaem” just beyond, at the westernmost point of the estate. Susana designed this as her own final resting place and memorial almost a decade before she passed away. It is a charming arbour with a polished steel concave water basin and a spring at its heart. A path leads to a grotto carved in the rock where a statue of Aphrodite reclines and where her ashes are now secreted.

William had always wanted La Mortella to be his memorial and dedicated to young musicians. Susana deeply mourned the loss of her husband but was determined to honour his wishes and extend this legacy so, with formidable energy and passion she began a whole new phase of development in the upper garden, as well as extending William’s music room to construct a small recital hall and museum. It took three years to complete and was inaugurated with the first Masterclass in 1990, followed by a visit from HRH The Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) and Patron of the William Walton Trust. She went on to convert the huge water cistern on the hilside (defunct since the connection to the Naples water system ) into a guest house, La Foresteria, for the young musicians participating in the masterclasses each year and finally a Greek Theatre at the very top of the garden as a venue for larger symphonic concerts.

Susana, Lady Walton

La Mortella is now run by the Fondazione la Mortella and fulfills the wishes of both William and Susana, for thirty years annual music programmes of concerts and masterclasses have taken place there and the garden has become a botanical treasure of horticultural importance. La Mortella is a legacy of Susana’s love and remembrance for William and his music, and of her own passion and commitment to nurturing and sharing the wonders of nature. I remember her telling me that when she sailed for England after her wedding she brought with her a pocketful of seeds from her homeland, even thought she did not know where she was going to plant them.

I am sure they are still thriving at La Mortella.