Tuscan Paradise

"I have found a country retreat of such delight that I would be happy to live there forever," writes Marina Schinz of Valle Pinciole, the modestly sized but immodestly beguiling Tuscan estate of her friends Matteo and Federico. Schinz, a renowned garden photographer, has a well-developed eye for beauty on a human scale, and her exquisite photographs make as much of the dense intimacy of the villa's Jekyll garden as of the glorious hills and olive groves that lie just past its borders. Schinz was first attracted to the undeniably abundant hillside gardens of Valle Pinciole (some of them designed by the landscape designer Russell Page), then fell in love with the whole package, which is as fruitful a marriage of nature and art as its attentive owners can create. Schinz muses on the area's Etruscan history, neatly tying the ancient Etruscan love of luxury to the estate's very deliberate loveliness of design. Each corner of Valle Pinciole has small surprises in store: the classical Italian lemon garden surrounded by a sea of lavender, the maze hedge behind the orangerie, the stand of bamboo in the woodland garden. Schinz deems Valle Pinciole "a rare find" for its palpable sense of culture, its harmony and grace, and the way it reflects the temperaments and passions of its owners.