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Here is one of my rules: when in a foreign city, check for a botanical garden. Rome’s is a disappointment and Berlin’s needs an upgrade, but the botanical gardens in New York, Edinburgh and Munich are unmissable. Even those that fall between these extremes keep green thoughts alive in a temporarily urbanised mind. One green thought leads to another, as I have just found in Italy.
这是我的一个规则：在外国城市时，要查找植物园。罗马的植物园令人失望，柏林的植物园需要升级，但纽约、爱丁堡和慕尼黑的植物园是不容错过的。即使是那些介于这两个极端之间的植物园，也能在暂时城市化的心灵中保留绿色的想法。一个绿色的想法会引发另一个，就像我刚刚在意大利发现的那样。
Padua’s botanical garden in northern Italy traces its history back to 1545 and lays claim to be the oldest in existence. In Italy the 1540s were indeed a formative time for botanical gardens. Padua’s began with a vote by the Senate in Venice, Padua’s overlord, in May 1545. In December, Florence followed suit at the prompting of its grand duke Cosimo de Medici. While Pisa had a botanical garden before 1545, as a letter referring to it seems to prove, Padua’s claim to be the oldest rests on it being the botanical garden that has existed longest on the same site. Certainly, these Italian gardens are all older than any in England. The first English botanical garden is Oxford’s, founded in 1621 on the site of a medieval Jewish cemetery.
意大利北部的帕多瓦植物园可以追溯到1545年，声称是现存最古老的植物园。在意大利，1540年代确实是植物园发展的关键时期。帕多瓦的植物园始于1545年5月威尼斯参议院的一次投票。12月，弗洛伦斯在其大公科西莫•德•美第奇(Cosimo de Medici)的推动下也效仿了。虽然比萨在1545年之前就有一个植物园，一封提到它的信似乎证明了这一点，但帕多瓦之所以声称是最古老的，是因为它是在同一地点存在时间最长的植物园。毫无疑问，这些意大利的植物园都比英国的任何一个都要古老。英国的第一个植物园是牛津大学的，于1621年在一座中世纪犹太公墓的遗址上建立。
I first saw Padua’s garden in a hot August 35 years ago. It was interesting, but in need of attention. It has received it since 2000 and is now in much better form. It is not only because it has a new visitor centre, Biodiversity Garden and Botanical Museum. Padua’s glasshouses still have a good collection of carnivorous plants and specimens of the small variety of palm tree that fascinated Goethe on his visit in 1786. He studied it carefully and went on to write a book on the “metamorphosis” of plants, arguing for an original Ur-plant from which all others derive. He had no idea of evolution and Darwin’s theories make his a curiosity.
35年前的炎热8月，我第一次见到了帕多瓦的花园。它很有趣，但需要关注。自2000年以来，它得到了关注，并且现在形态更好。这不仅因为它有了新的游客中心、生物多样性花园(Biodiversity Garden)和植物博物馆(Botanical Museum)。帕多瓦的温室仍然拥有一系列食肉植物和小型棕榈树标本，这些标本曾在1786年吸引了歌德。他仔细研究了它，并写了一本关于植物“变态”的书，主张存在一个原始的“原植物”，其他所有植物都源自它。他对进化没有概念，达尔文的理论使他的观点成为一种奇特的现象。
Padua’s garden was not just a site for his misunderstanding. He appreciated other plants, especially a scarlet-flowered outdoor climber that is still a mainstay of gardens in London and warm climates. Campsis radicans is extremely vigorous and willing to flower even in warm Britain, bearing those red-orange trumpet-shaped flowers that give it the popular name of Trumpet Vine. Its native home is the east coast of the US and southern Ontario.
帕多瓦的花园不仅仅是他误解的场所。他欣赏其他植物，尤其是一种开着猩红色花朵的室外攀缘植物，这种植物在伦敦和温暖气候的花园中仍然是主要的园艺植物。喇叭藤(Campsis radicans)非常旺盛，并且即使在温暖的英国也愿意开花，开着那些红橙色的喇叭状花朵，因此被称为喇叭藤。它的原产地是美国东海岸和安大略省南部。
English settlers in Virginia were quick to send plants back home, though it was an invasive climber in the wild. By 1790, it was well established on Padua’s wall, where Goethe admired its magical effect like a tapestry, covering the wall with scarlet bells. The better form now is Madame Galen, one with bigger and better trumpets, which originated in Italy and was put on the market in the 1880s. I can never decide if in ordinary gardens its vivid flowers are worth all the space its vigorous stems occupy. It has no scent.
弗吉尼亚的英国移民迅速将这种野生的入侵攀缘植物送回了家乡。到1790年，它已经在帕多瓦的墙上扎根，歌德欣赏它像挂毯一样的神奇效果，墙上覆盖着猩红色的钟花。现在更好的品种是盖伦夫人，它的喇叭更大更好，起源于意大利，并在19世纪80年代投放市场。我始终无法决定在普通花园中，它鲜艳的花朵是否值得它强健的茎干所占据的所有空间。它没有香味。
Goethe knew our campsis as Bignonia, for many years its name in gardens. Padua’s garden was not founded for botany as we now understand it. In 1533 the city’s university had a professor for the “reading of Simples”: plants with therapeutic properties. The Padua garden was to be a garden of medicinal plants, linking up with this teaching. Its naming and taxonomy were not ours, but it had a superbly designed plan.
歌德将我们的凌霄花称为大花藤，多年来它在花园中的名字就是如此。帕多瓦花园并非像我们现在理解的那样为植物学而建立。1533年，帕多瓦大学设立了一个“阅读单味草药”的教授职位，研究具有治疗特性的植物。帕多瓦花园旨在成为一个药用植物园，与这门学科相联系。它的命名和分类不同于我们的，但它有一个精心设计的规划。
After his visit, Goethe wrote a book arguing for an original Ur-plant from which all others derive. He had no idea of evolution
访问后，歌德写了一本书，主张所有其他植物都来自一种原始的乌尔植物。他对进化一无所知
The architect Andrea Moroni drew it at the very beginning. He was already working for the monastery that ceded the ground for the new garden: he devised a perfect circle in which individual flower beds would lie. The circle was defined by a perimeter of high walls against which there were 16 segmented beds. Further inside there was a second circle dominated by four rectangular subdivisions, each with a further pattern of flower beds.
最初由建筑师安德烈亚•莫罗尼(Andrea Moroni)绘制。他当时已经在为将土地让给新花园的修道院工作：他设计了一个完美的圆圈，其中有独立的花坛。这个圆圈由高墙围成，墙边有16个分段花坛。更里面有一个由四个矩形分区组成的第二个圆圈，每个分区都有进一步的花坛图案。
The outer circle of walls has been replaced by a rectangular one, but the curving segments are still visible and are mostly planted with fine trees. Further inside, the circle of the plan is still visible, as are the inner subdivisions and little flower beds. They are a testimony to meticulous and rational geometric planning. Botanical gardens should be based on an underlying notion of order, imposed by man on nature. Padua’s still is.
外围的城墙已被矩形城墙所取代，但弯曲的部分仍然可见，并且大部分都种植了优美的树木。再往里走，平面图的圆形仍然清晰可见，内部的划分和小花坛也是如此。它们是细致和合理的几何规划的见证。植物园应该基于人类对自然施加的一种秩序概念。帕多瓦的植物博物馆依然如此。
The main inner subdivisions are defined by smart railings, also a later introduction, but the beds have a style that would be transferable to English gardens too. They are edged and divided by stone blocks laid vertically with one thin curved edge protruding just above ground level. Modern designers sometimes set brick on edge for a similar effect, but Padua’s stone blocks are more stylish.
主要的内部分区由智能栏杆界定，这也是后来引入的，但花坛的风格也适用于英国的花园。花坛的边缘和分隔由竖直放置的石块组成，其中一条薄弯曲的边缘略高于地面。现代设计师有时会将砖块竖立放置以达到类似的效果，但帕多瓦的石块更具时尚感。
I measured the spacing to help you copy it. Most of the little beds are about 3ft wide and long. Some of them taper to a point and make a narrowing triangle, but others are a grid of squares. The paths between them are 4ft wide and surfaced with smart grey-yellow grit. No weeds poke through.
我测量了间距，方便你复制。大多数小花坛的宽度和长度约为3英尺。有些逐渐变尖，形成一个变窄的三角形，而另一些则是方格网。它们之间的小径宽4英尺，铺有精致的灰黄色砂砾。没有杂草冒出来。
Mild, sunny October is not hot August, but I found the outdoor plantings and the hundreds of pots more cheerful than on my former visit. Stone-edged beds of purple autumn crocuses and colchicums are rather smart, as are beds with red, not pink, amaryllis and even a grass with fluffy purple heads, Muehlenbergia capillaris, which is widely on sale in Britain. The stone edges prevent this muhly grass from becoming invasive.
温和、阳光明媚的10月并不像炎热的八月，但我发现室外的种植和数百个盆栽比我上次访问时更加愉快。紫色秋水仙和秋水仙花的石边花床相当漂亮，红色的孤挺花床也很漂亮，而不是粉红色的，甚至还有一种带有蓬松紫色花穗的草，Muehlenbergia capillaris，在英国广泛销售。石边可以防止这种毛茛草变得具有侵略性。
What most impressed me was the resistance of two particular plants to a Paduan dry summer, though books often say they need a damp soil. Plainly they do not. One is a tree and the other is a good herbaceous plant, flowering now.
最让我印象深刻的是两种植物对帕多瓦干燥夏季的抵抗力，尽管书上常说它们需要潮湿的土壤。显然它们并不需要。其中一种是一棵树，另一种是一种优良的草本植物，现在正在开花。
Old tall trees are a distinction of the botanical garden, as in Florence and Pisa. A ginkgo tree goes back to 1750, before Goethe’s visit, and is a true hermaphrodite, as its male trunk has been grafted with a female branch. A superb Magnolia grandiflora was planted in 1786 and is even bigger than a fine one in the cloisters of Padua’s famous cathedral. A tulip tree towers to the sky, but what impresses me is a big Swamp cypress, which is doing likewise.
古老的高大树木是植物园的一大特色，如同弗洛伦斯和比萨的植物园。一棵银杏树可以追溯到1750年，早于歌德的访问，它是一棵真正的雌雄同体树，因为它的雄性树干上嫁接了雌性树枝。一棵壮丽的广玉兰树于1786年种植，比帕多瓦著名大教堂回廊里的一棵还要大。一棵郁金香树高耸入云，但让我印象深刻的是一棵巨大的沼泽柏树，它也在同样地生长。
Swamp cypress, or taxodium, is often found in wet ground, but it does not insist on it. Botanical gardens have big specimens in dry places and hot climates, from New York to Padua. In gardens and fields we should be more bold and use it away from water. We should also be bolder about the spotted little toad lily or tricyrtis. The official advice is always to plant this October-flowering plant in shade in damp soil. Why though is Tricyrtis formosana flowering freely in Padua, 2ft high and happy in a hot summer without irrigation? Here too I think we have been inflexible. Slugs, not sun, are what kills this excellent plant in Britain.
沼泽柏树，又称为落羽杉，通常生长在湿地，但并不一定需要湿地。从纽约到帕多瓦的植物园中，有大型标本生长在干燥的地方和炎热的气候中。在花园和田野中，我们应该更加大胆地将其用于远离水源的地方。对于斑点小蟾蜍百合或三百合，我们也应该更加大胆。官方建议总是将这种10月开花的植物种植在阴凉潮湿的土壤中。然而，为什么在帕多瓦，台湾三百合能够在没有灌溉的炎热夏季中自由开花，长到2英尺高并且茁壮成长呢？在这里，我认为我们过于死板。在英国，杀死这种优秀植物的是蛞蝓，而不是阳光。
Padua’s botanical garden is good to visit, but the overriding reason for visiting the city as a tourist is its Arena chapel, frescoed by Giotto, the maestro, from 1303-1305. With green thoughts in mind I visited it too and became aware of details I had never expected. Art and flowers have featured in this column all year, but I will save Giotto’s surprises for that appropriate season whose founding event he also painted, Christmas.
帕多瓦的植物园固然值得一游，但作为游客来这座城市最重要的原因还是它的竞技场教堂，该教堂的壁画由大师乔托在1303年至1305年间绘制。带着绿色的思绪，我也参观了这座教堂，并发现了一些我意想不到的细节。艺术和花卉一直是这个专栏的主题，但我会把乔托的惊喜留到他也绘制了创始事件的那个合适的季节——圣诞节。
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