Villa Narcissa : The Plan for This Italian Renaissance Garden Was Straightforward--It Was to Be Appropriate to Its Mediterranean Climate

WHEN THE SUN comes up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the sea sparkles and the early morning light sweeps across the Villa Narcissa, setting its bright paint on fire and illumining the garden with a golden glow. On days such as this, the sky is an intense blue, the ocean is aquamarine, and you can hear the crash of surf and the sharp cries of peacocks echoing in the canyon. In Southern California, there is no other place quite like it.

That remarkable light, seen only in Mediterranean climates, rich and intense with razor-sharp shadows--a painter’s light--is not easy to work with. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that the Villa Narcissa is home for Elin Vanderlip, who, as founder and guiding light of Friends of French Art, devotes herself to the preservation of art.

The Villa Narcissa was built in 1924 by the late Frank A. Vanderlip, who had purchased the 16,000 or so acres of the original Spanish Land Grant of Rancho Palos Verdes. Vanderlip spent several years deciding on a suitable site for his villa, even employing a meteorologist to make sure it would be above the low coastal fog. Vanderlip settled on this site--below the ridge of the mountains but high above the sea--with a view down the canyon to the breaking surf at Portuguese Bend. First he built a rustic ranch house and then a guest house, the present villa. The Depression interceded; the main house was never built. But Vanderlip did not seem all that interested in houses anyway, preferring to spend his time on the gardens and on a collection of exotic birds that, save for a noisy band of peacocks, later would be moved to the Wrigley property on Catalina.

America’s premier landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, laid out the original garden while he was working on the planning of the City of Palos Verdes Estates. Olmsted’s design was Mediterranean in style, with a cypress allee up the hill, pepper- and olive-lined drives, an orangerie and a kitchen garden. The plan was straightforward--the garden was to be appropriate to its climate. There was no attempt to duplicate the shaded Vanderlip estate in New York or the green gardens of England, though the villas and gardens of Tuscany were given more than a sideways glance.

The original garden, however, is mostly gone, a victim of “devastating brush fires and acquisitions by owners with less interest in the land,” as Elin Vanderlip discreetly puts it. Several old cypresses and a few pines remain, but most of what you now see is the restorative work of Elin Vanderlip, who has been careful not to over-restore the surroundings. The many shades of paint on the house, the chips and cracks of time; the old, gnarled trunks of the original trees: All of those could be easily patched or replaced but are purposefully left the way they are to add texture to the present.

The approach to the villa is still under renovation, awaiting the necessary funds. There are several hundred trees to replant and about a mile of drive to pave. Above the house, a dramatic driveway leads to one of the outbuildings and appears as it should--rough gravel serving as paving, hand-laid stone and stucco walls to either side, a pine with its trunk painted a very visible white. Pride of Madeira, geraniums and trailing African daisies grow here with little more than rain to sustain them.

It is also here that you notice that certain plants--Italian cypress, stone and Aleppo pines, geraniums and African daisies, tall bearded iris and citrus, and our own native grasses and chaparral--look strong and clear in the Mediterranean light, their grayed colors readily taking on the glow of sunrise and sunset.

Rustic steps of broken roof tile ensure a secure footing for the trek down the hill and employ the color of the house--thus the parts become a harmonious whole, framed by the twin rows of cypresses. Most of the cypresses are still young, though here and there are survivors from the previous garden, now massive and heavy with several trunks.

Partway down the hill, you pass through the orangerie and kitchen garden, enclosed by a fence that keeps out the peacocks. Behind a gate painted a bright Provence blue is a tunnel of deciduous fruit trees espaliered on hoops over the central walk. Beds of artichokes, herbs and kitchen vegetables are on either side; behind them are rows of bearded iris for cutting.

A fountain lies at the foot of the main allee , signaling a change of venue--you are about to enter the irrigated section of the garden with its clipped formality and lusher, brighter greens. After a few more steps, you are at the entry, where walkways at either side lead to other gardens. As in all classic Italian Renaissance gardens (and most gardens built prior to the 19th Century), not everything is revealed at once--there is not one big garden, but many smaller gardens, each with its own surprises.

There is another kind of light on the peninsula--the hazy, gray light of an overcast day, and parts of the garden seem planned for that inevitable event. One area is just to the right of the entrance court, where most of the flowers are grown, including those for the house. Here is the only patch of true lawn, surrounded by borders filled with delphiniums and other stately flowers that look best not in the clear, clean light of a high, hot sun, but in the cool light that penetrates the thin cloud cover of an overcast day.

To the left of the front door is a formal walk, the true entry to the garden and house. And to one side of that, a remarkable little garden where moss and sweet alyssum make a meadow surrounded by shady beds.

Continue on and you are on the back terrace, which sits atop a retaining wall and offers a view of the entire canyon and the sea beyond where Catalina floats, firmly anchored, on a hazy horizon.

This terrace faces due south. At one end is a formal rose garden and fountain and at the other a short allee of young olive trees that shade tables of Vincenza stone. This terrace is modeled after one seen by Elin Vanderlip at the Villa Albobrandini, Frascati--the Hortensia terrace--a reference to the large pots of garden hydrangeas that line its edges (at one time, this common hydrangea was named Hydrangea hortensia ; now H. macrophylla ). The olives overhead, only 5 years old, provide just enough filtered light for the hydrangeas, which show their delight by blooming most of summer. (The photographs of the alyssum meadow and the Hortensia terrace were taken in summer--the other photographs show the garden in spring--and are from the book “Intimate Gardens,” by Susan Ashbrook, to be published sometime next year.)

No tour of the Villa Narcissa is complete until Vanderlip takes you in her four-wheel-drive truck across the canyon to a grove of pines planted by her mother. From there, you can see the entire property, and the tidal wave of new homes cresting the hill behind. Those houses--with a more panoramic view, but on the windier ridge above--seem confused as to their whereabouts, sporting colors that do not complement the soil or surroundings, and planted with vegetation that would certainly be happier in a wetter, less windy climate. In contrast, the Villa Narcissa, painted a deeper shade than the soil it rests on, looks completely at home--dry native grasses and olive-green chaparral slowly giving way to the brighter grays of century plants and olives and the dark green of the cypress sentinels.