It’s not every day that a client asks us to develop a garden around 500-year old Olives transported from Puglia, but we were up for the challenge. Invited by our great friend and local architect, Andrea Piatti, to oversee the design and construciton of the landscape surrounding this rural retreat below the historic hilltown of Assisi, we utilized a minimal planting palette of highly drought tolerant and evergreen mediterranean species to offset the water requirements of the property’s lawn areas. A new woodland of holm oaks (quercus ilex) were planted to the North providing wind protection and reinforcing a strong entry experience that gradually opens to a spectacular Southern view of rolling olive groves and the Umbrian countryside below.