Wonderful wisteria

LAST month, I guided a group of COUNTRY LIFE readers around the gardens of the Italian Riviera.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

We stayed at Villa della Pergola above Alassio, which has just become an RHS Partner Garden. The estate has a long connection with England because its two main houses were built by an expat and his father-in-law in the 1870s and later acquired by Sir Walter Hamilton-Dalrymple, who fled to Italy in the wake of the trial of Oscar Wilde. Some of the garden's palm trees, roses and wisterias date back to these early years, but its botanical interest soared after it was bought in 1922 by Daniel Hanbury, the second son of Sir Thomas Hanbury, who founded the famous gardens at La Mortola.