The "Irregolare" Garden
 
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The "Irregolare" Garden

In 1855, Lucio Tasca took his first steps towards the transformation of his property (and probably evolution of his ideals), changing the formal parterre garden into The "Giardino irregolare", an English-inspired garden modeled after the Gardenesque style made popular by the Scottish Botanist and Garden Designer, John Claudius Loudon. It included a curvilinear ornamental fountain surrounded by aquatic plants, free-form plant beds with various hedges, shrubs, cycads, palms etc. and open spaces that featured the garden's potted collection.

But the collection of plants in this section was anything but British. Thanks to its mild climate, exotic plants could grow better in Palermo than any other place in Europe (and often more rigorously than their homeland). The new irregular garden placed these plants on a lawn backdrop to be seen and admired for the rare beauties that they were. In particular, this part of the garden features some of Palermo's oldest and largest specimens of cycads (Cycas revoluta, Cycas circinalis), an incredible Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla), and nearly a dozen different palm species.

While the interior pathways are free form, the perimeter pathways, along with the hedges, maintain their original formal geometry and parallelism to the wall of the precedent 1700ds parterre garden. 4 small pools also remained – referring back to the medieval paradise garden. They make up the corners of a rectangle, with the curvilinear pool at the center.