In message , Sacha
writes

I saw a magical display in a vineyard villa in the Italian Lakes years
ago: they had what must once have been a large shallow round fountain,
now dry. This was completely filled with hydrangeas in pots, as many as
fitted - and their gardener must have done something different to the
soil in each, because although the plants looked very similar, they
ranged in all possible shades from pink though lilac to blue....

And you're going to tell us you can't remember the name of the garden......?
;-) A living rainbow, how lovely!

What a lovely way to describe it: that's exactly what it was like! If
you add the balmy air heavy with the scent of flowering olive groves,
the beautiful old villa with medieval reliefs, up in the hills somewhere
above Bergamo, it doesn't even begin to describe the enchantment of the
place. The name of the garden? It was the summer villa of a
school-friend (she had been sent to our convent boarding-school in the
States to learn English, but I think we all learned rather more
Italian!), and alas, now I only have her Milan address ... do the
Italians have an Open Gardens scheme, I wonder?

--
Klara, Gatwick basin