The Church of Il Redentore, as it is familiarly known (its official name in English is the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer), sits south of Venice proper, across the water on the narrow island called the Giudecca. For centuries known primarily as an industrial zone, the island has attracted people to its lower rents and relaxed atmosphere. In 1884, Frederic Eden and his wife, Caroline Jekyll (elder sister of Gertrude), took up residence in an old palazzo a stone’s throw from Il Redentore, just across the Rio della Croce canal, where they made a celebrated garden that was visited by Henry James, Jean Cocteau and many others. (Last occupied by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who died in 2000, it is now kept in a wild state, according to his wishes.)
To the east of Il Redentore is the Benedictine church of San Giorgio Maggiore, on its own little island, with a brick campanile that is one of the major landmarks to be spied from St Mark’s Square. Both domed churches were designed by Andrea Palladio, although the Franciscan Il Redentore was more simply conceived — its light-filled marble interior a symphony in white, grey, cream and ochre, relatively unadorned by painting, gilding or other decoration. That is not to say it is not magnificent: multiple soaring marble pilasters have a mesmeric effect, each one crowned by a large and richly carved Corinthian capital, creating a sense of an ethereal forest, reflective of St Francis’s fabled engagement with the natural world.
The view looking back towards Andrea Palladio’s Church of Il Redentore, with the path bisected by one of the chestnut pergolas added by designer Paolo Pejrone.
This sacral monument to the concept of redemption was commissioned as an act of gratitude by the citizens of Venice who had survived the plague of 1575–77. It replaced a far smaller church and convent made by the Franciscans on this spot in the 1530s. Given that the convent and its garden were completed in the 1590s, more than a decade after Palladio’s death, it is unlikely he had any hand in the design of the 2½-acre monastic garden that occupies the land south of the church, up to the edge of the lagoon.
The garden of the friars has always been resolutely private, but, last year, an exemplary restoration (organised by the Venice Gardens Foundation) was completed and it is now open to the public. British tourists have, of course, been flocking to Venice for centuries, but never for greenery and outdoor space. The garden of Il Redentore changes all that, offering a worthwhile horticultural counterpoint to all the other riches La Serenissima has to offer.
The first known depiction of the garden is a coloured perspective map of Venice of 1696 (by Giovanni Merlo), which clearly shows a wooden pergola bedecked with greenery in a cross-shape, surrounded by rectangular planting beds. One candidate as designer is Friar Antonio Pisollo da Pordenone, who was fabbriciere (architect) for the Capuchins in the region of Venice and produced a treatise (1603–23) on monastery building. His specification included not only fruit, vegetables and medicinal plants, but also a viridarium, reserved for growing the flowers intended for the altars of the church. Pordenone also delineated the addition of small meditation chapels, perhaps intended as evocations of the caves in the wilderness in which the earliest followers of Francis lived.
Historical precedent has informed the restoration — seven friars are still in residence — but the intention was never simply to reproduce a monastic garden. Veteran landscape architect Paolo Pejrone was invited to reinterpret the hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden, of the Franciscan tradition and, although the result is still recognisably medieval-monastic in flavour, there is also considerable emphasis on atmosphere and decoration. In this sense, the restoration brings to mind the great French potager garden of Villandry, even if this is not immaculate in the same way.
Visitors enter via an unevenly shaped cloister garden filled with a grid of olive trees, an unexpected agricultural note in Venice’s urban environment. It is a prelude to the garden proper, which is first glimpsed dramatically at the end of a dark passageway, emerging into the light. Pejrone’s main change to the historic scheme was an elaboration on the cruciform theme of the chestnut pergola, which in his hands comprises two main paths along the garden’s length and two principal cross paths.
The sight that greets visitors on entering the restored friars’ garden is a straight path through an olive grove backed by cypress trees, lined with simple herbs of the kind the Franciscan monks here have always grown.
This double cruciform creates the central square in which a large brickwork pool now sits, filled with lilies and lotuses, its surrounding wall adorned by terracotta pots filled with scented pelargoniums. The pergola — festooned with abundant grapes in season, giving off their distinctive pungent scent — also plays a role in that it frames views across the garden spaces. The east and west edges of the garden are planted with tall cypresses, with hydrangeas below.
Horticulturally, the monastic inheritance has been honoured in many ways, with herbs such as rosemary, thyme, mint and lavender tumbling over the path edges, plantings of flowers, such as dahlias, salvias, roses, lilies and marigolds, and large beds filled with massed plantings of vegetables — including bright chillies and tomatoes, shiso leaf and an artichoke variety grown only on the island of Sant’Erasmo, ‘Venice’s market garden’. The southern part of the garden is given over to orchard trees, such as almonds, cherries, figs, persimmons, quinces, mulberries, medlars, greengages and pomegranates. There are certain Pejrone signature interventions, too, including the pink-flowering South African trumpet vine Podranea ricasoliana, which flowers into the autumn on the pergola, alongside wisteria and campsis, and Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’, with huge glossy leaves. More unusual species have been planted en masse in swathes, following the dictum of Brazilian designer Roberto Burle Marx, who, together with Russell Page, was Pejrone’s major influence.
The catalyst for the restoration was a flood in November 2019 that caused great damage to the garden and left the ground filled with salt. Capo gardiniere Edoardo Bodi explains that he and his team have been neutralising the soil with powdered chalk and organic matter. No chemicals are used in the garden and no artificial irrigation; a 400ft well has been dug as the prime water source. In aesthetic terms, anything plastic is kept out of sight and the garden team has devised methods and materials that are not exactly historical, but do not look modern — such as brown twine made into netting to deter pigeons or terracotta pots used as weights. The furniture — wooden benches — is uniform and simple and the light fixtures in the pergola and along the paths have been designed bespoke, to be less intrusive; the same goes for the small litter bins. All of this comes at a cost, of course, so it is fortunate the budget (€5.5 million) has been more than adequate; a garden team of six has been retained, too.
One of the two meditation chapels that were part of the original layout of the garden in the 1590s.
Running across the breadth of the garden at its southern end are the old ‘offices’ or ancillary buildings, which include an oil mill and honey-extraction room (historic beehives have been reintroduced to the garden). The cement that was covering the buildings was removed to reveal mellow, red-orange brickwork that was then restored using the painstaking scuci-cuci method. At the east end of the range is one of the friars’ two original meditation chapels; it has been stabilised, but left with raw brick walls and an aperture where the altar once was and there is a plan to add a bench of some kind so that visitors can pray or meditate.
The final surprise lies beyond this range: a grove of pittosporum trees with an old central path that leads to a terrace overlooking the lagoon, with wide views out to the minor southern islands. A pergola planted with Banksian roses has been introduced and part of the space is used as the terrace for the small café-restaurant, serving simple fare in the Franciscan tradition, now a hotspot for well-heeled Venetians. This part of the garden is thought to have been made in the first decades of the 20th century using spoil dredged up from the lagoon. It is divided in the middle by a water channel that leads to the monastery’s boathouse, with the western side — olives in grass — reserved for the friars’ private use.
Given its successful outcome, the motto of this creative restoration seems eminently justified: In Venetia Hortus Redemptoris.
Find out more about visiting at the Venice Gardens Foundation website.
This feature originally appeared in the December 24 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.