Modern Landscaping Lessons From A Historic Italian Garden

It seems as if I have always known of the Villa d‘Este, the celebrated Renaissance villa and adjoining gardens northeast of Rome, but until this spring I really didn’t know much about it. I was dimly aware of the complex’s influence on landscape design, especially the fountain-rich, terraced gardens behind the frescoed house, but I couldn’t really work up a picture in my mind. Then, during a trip to Rome this spring, I decided to find out what the five-hundred-year-old fuss was about and hailed a taxi on the Via Veneto in the early morning traffic.

Located in Tivoli, a playground for ancient and Renaissance Romans about 20 miles from the Colosseum, the Villa d’Este was the brainchild of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este (1509–1572), son of Renaissance art patron and Duke of Ferrara Alfonso d’Este and his controversial wife, Spanish-Italian power player and putative poisoner, Lucrezia Borgia. These days, it is reached only after a rather dispiriting trip through the anonymous eastern suburbs and exurbs of contemporary Rome, which might as well be outside Rome, N.Y. Even the entrance to the complex is kind of sad, off a small-town square with a curious work of menacing public art. But then the jaw-dropping splendor begins.

The stately villa, whose wholly frescoed interiors are spectacular enough, is perched above the gardens, which swoop down over countless levels, crisscrossed by a skyscraper’s worth of staircases and punctuated by some 50 sculptural fountains that run the gamut from large to huge to building-size.

A technical marvel in its time—and a Unesco World Heritage site and museum today—the 11-acre site’s sunken gardens use gravity to turn the local Aniene River into a constant motor for fountains, pools and dozens of artificial waterfalls. The Villa d’Este relies on the basic building blocks of Renaissance garden design—evergreen trees and Italian stone—to frame and fashion the gurgling, rushing and sheer wetness of all that water, which is not only meant to be seen but heard, felt and even endured, splashing you in the face when you least expect it.

The gardens start with…a pause.

Between the house and the garden slope is a quiet vialone, or avenue, bordered by a low wall and punctuated by elevated ceramic pots. This allows the mind to catch its breath between the fabulous frescoes and the watery wonderland beneath.

I heard falling water before I saw it, then my eye traveled to the right, to the so-called Hundred Fountains, a lane along which grotesque masks shoot water into a trough. Then I descended to the Cypress Rotunda, a giant display of twisting trees, some dating back to the 17th century.

Down I went, to the long array of fish ponds, or decorative reflecting pools, which lead the eye up to the Fountain of Neptune and, beyond, to the Fountain of the Organ, which uses river water to power an actual organ.

Then up I went to the piazza-fronted Oval Fountain, whose mammoth cascade of water suggests a glistening glass curtain, and back down again to the Fountain of Diana, a surreal multi-breasted symbol of fertility. I was getting tired, and hot, and after breathing the heady aromas of the rose garden, I paused in the cool darkness of the Grottoes of the Sibyls.

As it turns out, I was supposed to get tired, said Michael Lee, a professor in the history of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, and a fellow this spring at the American Academy in Rome. The gardens are dense in mythological imagery, and the need to hike up and down was meant to “re-enact the labors of Hercules,” he said. I was expected to get tired and wet and hot and to notice the sounds of the fountains increase from nearly musical to almost deafening.

“The Villa d’Este is meant to be immersive,” said Prof. Lee, engaging all our senses, while later western garden design, from the French formal variety to the English landscape version, became ever more visual.

I later asked landscape designer Adam Woodruff, in Marblehead, Mass., how a gardener of more modest means and acreage could make a plot immersive. In his own meadow-style garden he converted a circular zinc planter, about 3 feet in diameter, into a reflecting pool. By adding a bit of black dye formulated for the purpose, he made the surface mirrorlike, so that sky and flower stalks prettily echo off the water. Thirsty birds steadily supply bird song (and avian-safe mosquito larvicide keeps bugs from breeding there). The simple vessel serves as a strategic focal point in the loosely structured garden, which includes a number of grass species.

Feeding all the senses was but one of the lessons Villa d’Este offers the home gardener. Others include creating a buffer between your house and your garden. Don’t be afraid to add humor, or even a bit of the grotesque. Save a place among the plants for stones, water, a statue or two or even a whole fountain.

The spring morning at the complex had turned into an almost summery afternoon, but now the weather grew overcast and faintly fall-like. It was time to go back to Rome, wetter and wiser, with the reminder that great design—in a garden, as in a house—should be lived rather than just looked at.

Many people considering an electric vehicle are turned off by their prices or the paucity of public charging stations. But the biggest roadblock often is “range anxiety”—the fear of getting stuck on a desolate road with a dead battery.

All EVs carry window stickers stating how far they should go on a full charge. Yet these range estimates—overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and touted in carmakers’ ads—can be wrong in either direction: either overstating or understating the distance that can be driven, sometimes by 25% or more.

How can that be? Below are questions and answers about how driving ranges are calculated, what factors affect the range, and things EV owners can do to go farther on a charge.

How far will an electric vehicle go on a full battery?

The distance, according to EPA testing, ranges from 516 miles for the 2023 Lucid Air Grand Touring with 19-inch wheels to 100 miles for the 2023 Mazda MX-30.

Most EVs are in the 200-to-300-mile range. While that is less than the distance that many gasoline-engine cars can go on a full tank, it makes them suitable for most people’s daily driving and medium-size trips. Yet it can complicate longer journeys, especially since public chargers can be far apart, occupied or out of service. Plus, it takes many times longer to charge an EV than to fill a tank with gas.

How accurate are the EPA range estimates?

Testing by Car and Driver magazine found that few vehicles go as far as the EPA stickers say. On average, the distance was 12.5% shorter, according to the peer-reviewed study distributed by SAE International, formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers.

In some cases, the estimates were further off: The driving range of Teslas fell below their EPA estimate by 26% on average, the greatest shortfall of any EV brand the magazine tested. Separately, federal prosecutors have sought information about the driving range of Teslas, The Wall Street Journal reported. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The study also said Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup truck went 230 miles compared with the EPA’s 300-mile estimate, while the Chevrolet Bolt EV went 220 miles versus the EPA’s 259.

A GM spokesman said that “actual range may vary based on several factors, including things like temperature, terrain/road type, battery age, loading, use and maintenance.” Ford said in a statement that “the EPA [figure] is a standard. Real-world range is affected by many factors, including driving style, weather, temperature and if the battery has been preconditioned.”

Meanwhile, testing by the car-shopping site Edmunds found that most vehicles beat their EPA estimates. It said the Ford Lightning went 332 miles on a charge, while the Chevy Bolt went 265 miles.

That is confusing. How can the test results vary so much?

Driving range depends largely on the mixture of highway and city roads used for testing. Unlike gasoline-powered cars, EVs are more efficient in stop-and-go driving because slowing down recharges their batteries through a process called regenerative braking. Conversely, traveling at a high speed can eat up a battery’s power faster, while many gas-engine cars meet or exceed their EPA highway miles-per-gallon figure.

What types of driving situations do the various tests use?

Car and Driver uses only highway driving to see how far an EV will go at a steady 75 mph before running out of juice. Edmunds uses a mix of 60% city driving and 40% highway. The EPA test, performed on a treadmill, simulates a mixture of 55% highway driving and 45% city streets.

What’s the reasoning behind the different testing methods?

Edmunds believes the high proportion of city driving it uses is more representative of typical EV owners, says Jonathan Elfalan, Edmunds’s director of vehicle testing. “Most of the driving [in an EV] isn’t going to be road-tripping but driving around town,” he says.

Car and Driver, conversely, says its all-highway testing is deliberately more taxing than the EPA method. High-speed interstate driving “really isn’t covered by the EPA’s methodology,” says Dave VanderWerp, the magazine’s testing director. “Even for people driving modest highway commutes, we think they’d want to know that their car could get 20%-30% less range than stated on the window sticker.”

What does the EPA say about the accuracy of its range figures?

The agency declined to make a representative available to comment, but said in a statement: “Just like there are variations in EPA’s fuel-economy label [for gas-engine cars] and people’s actual experience on the road for a given make and model of cars/SUVs, BEV [battery electric vehicle] range can exceed or fall short of the label value.”

What should an EV shopper do with these contradictory range estimates?

Pick the one based on the testing method that you think matches how you generally will drive, highway versus city. When shopping for a car, be sure to compare apples to apples—don’t, for instance, compare the EPA range estimate for one vehicle with the Edmunds one for another. And view all these figures with skepticism. The estimates are just that.

Since range is so important to many EV buyers, why don’t carmakers simply add more batteries to provide greater driving distance?

Batteries are heavy and are the most expensive component in an EV, making up some 30% of the overall vehicle cost. Adding more could cut into a vehicle’s profit margin while the added weight means yet more battery power would be used to move the car.

But battery costs have declined over the past 10 years and are expected to continue to fall, while new battery technologies likely will increase their storage capacity. Already, some of the newest EV models can store more power at similar sticker prices to older ones.

What can an EV owner do to increase driving range?

The easiest thing is to slow down. High speeds eat up battery life faster. Traveling at 80 miles an hour instead of 65 can cut the driving range by 17%, according to testing by Geotab, a Canadian transportation-data company. And though a primal appeal of EVs is their zippy takeoff, hard acceleration depletes a battery much quicker than gentle acceleration.

Does cold weather lower the driving range?

It does, and sometimes by a great amount. The batteries are used to heat the car’s interior—there is no engine creating heat as a byproduct as in a gasoline car. And many EVs also use electricity to heat the batteries themselves, since cold can deteriorate the chemical reaction that produces power.

Testing by Consumer Reports found that driving in 15- to-20-degrees Fahrenheit weather at 70 mph can reduce range by about 25% compared to similar-speed driving in 65 degrees.

A series of short cold-weather trips degraded the range even more. Consumer Reports drove two EVs 40 miles each in 20-degree air, then cooled them off before starting again on another 40-mile drive. The cold car interiors were warmed by the heater at the start of each of three such drives. The result: range dropped by about 50%.

Does air conditioning degrade range?

Testing by Consumer Reports and others has found that using the AC has a much lower impact on battery range than cold weather, though that effect seems to increase in heat above 85 degrees.

I don’t want to freeze or bake in my car to get more mileage. What can I do?

“Precondition” your EV before driving off, says Alex Knizek, manager of automotive testing and insights at Consumer Reports. In other words, chill or heat it while it is still plugged in to a charger at home or work rather than using battery power on the road to do so. In the winter, turn on the seat heaters, which many EVs have, so you be comfortable even if you keep the cabin temperature lower. In the summer, try to park in the shade.

What about the impact from driving in a mountainous area?

Going up hills takes more power, so yes, it drains the battery faster, though EVs have an advantage over gas vehicles in that braking on the downside of hills returns juice to the batteries with regenerative braking.

Are there other factors that can affect range?

Tires play a role. Beefy all-terrain tires can eat up more electricity than standard ones, as can larger-diameter ones. And underinflated tires create more rolling resistance, and so help drain the batteries.

Most EVs give the remaining driving range on a dashboard screen. Are these projections accurate?

The meters are supposed to take into account your speed, outside temperature and other factors to keep you apprised in real time of how much farther you can travel. But EV owners and car-magazine testers complain that these “distance to empty” gauges can suddenly drop precipitously if you go from urban driving to a high-speed highway, or enter mountainous territory.

So be careful about overly relying on these gauges and take advantage of opportunities to top off your battery during a multihour trip. These stops could be as short as 10 or 15 minutes during a bathroom or coffee break, if you can find a high-powered DC charger.

Before embarking on a long trip, what should an EV owner do?

Fully charge the car at home before departing. This sounds obvious but can be controversial, since many experts say that routinely charging past 80% of a battery’s capacity can shorten its life. But they also say that charging to 100% occasionally won’t do damage. Moreover, plan your charging stops in advance to ease the I-might-run-out panic.

So battery life is an issue with EVs, just as with smartphones?

Yes, an EV battery’s ability to fully charge will degrade with use and age, likely leading to shorter driving range. Living in a hot area also plays a role. The federal government requires an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty on EV batteries for serious failure, while some EV makers go further and cover degradation of charging capacity. Replacing a bad battery costs many thousands of dollars.

What tools are available to map out charging stations?

Your EV likely provides software on the navigation screen as well as a phone app that show charging stations. Google and Apple maps provide a similar service, as do apps and websites of charging-station networks.

But always have a backup stop in mind—you might arrive at a charging station and find that cars are lined up waiting or that some of the chargers are broken. Damaged or dysfunctional chargers have been a continuing issue for the industry.

Any more tips?

Be sure to carry a portable charger with you—as a last resort you could plug it into any 120-volt outlet to get a dribble of juice.