About Me

Biography

Anna Scaravella is an Italian landscape architect. After a degree in forestry, she began her professional career working with Japanese architect Haruki Miyajima in Brianza and later as a designer and works supervisor for an important Tuscan nursery. Over the years, she has designed gardens all over Italy, whilst the last phase of her career has seen her work on various international commissions from Paris to Lausanne, from Formentera to Kuala Lumpur.

Books
Scaravella is also the author of several books. These include Creare un giardino, winner of the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2007, and Tra giardino e paesaggio, a journey through the Italian landscape by way of ten of her most important gardens. Published in Italy by Rizzoli in April 2025, the book was subsequently translated into English by Rizzoli New York with the title, Gardens and Landscapes: Ten Spaces of Beauty.

Tra giardino e paesaggio
https://www.rizzolilibri.it/libri/tra-giardino-e-paesaggio-libr/
https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9788891844514/
https://www.mondadorielecta.it/libri/tra-giardino-e-paesaggio-libr-anna-scaravella/

Creare un giardino
https://www.amazon.it/Creare-giardino-Ediz-illustrata-Scaravella/dp/8837040032

Dal paesaggio al giardino
https://www.lafeltrinelli.it/dal-paesaggio-al-giardino-idea-libro-anna-scaravella/e/9788837092528

Geometrie e botanica
https://www.electa.it/prodotto/geometrie-e-botanica-5/
Philosophy

Anna Scaravella’s main inspiration for designing her gardens was and remains the Italian landscape, understood not only as a sum of its morphological, botanical, and climatic characteristics but also as a historical heritage shaped by human activity over the centuries. Her gardens are “windows” onto the surrounding landscape, and as such they tend to blur the line between the inside and what instead lies beyond their boundaries.

Approach

Whilst her early designs presented a more eclectic and “architectural” approach, her recent production is characterised by a “naturalistic” approach that remains mindful of the Italian context. Mixed borders and hardy perennials typical of contemporary, wild-looking gardens coexist with evergreen shrubs such as rosemary and myrtle, as well as trees such as the cork oak—varieties endemic to her beloved
Mediterranean maquis.

Publications

Tra Giardino e Paesaggio
Creare un Giardino
Dal Paesaggio al Giardino
Geometrie e Botanica
Tra Giardino e Paesaggio
Creare un Giardino
Dal Paesaggio al Giardino
Geometrie e Botanica
Always attentive and focused on the substance rather than just the form of the garden, Anna reveals a lexicon of different design solutions tailored to the various cases she has handled...
Gilda Boiardi
Always mindful of blending the spirit of the place, the home's architecture, and the client's needs, Anna Scaravella creates gardens that truly leave a lasting impression.
Rosaria Zucconi
Anna Scaravella's work is a long narrative of how a garden is born, and how a desire becomes an idea, the idea a project, the project a sequence of choices, and finally, how everything becomes a system where every element is in harmonious dialogue with the others.
Annamaria Testa
Making gardens isn't just about putting plants in the ground. Knowing them isn't enough, either. It's a matter tied to the intimacy of creation. It's alive just like we are, maybe even more so, and you can't simply show that—you can only imagine it.
Paolo Campostrini
Over the years, the formal geometries typical of Italian gardens have given way to the aesthetic interplay of native and exotic grasses found in naturalistic gardens (...) but this evolution is itself the result of a poetic approach that always takes the surrounding context as its starting point.
Bartolomeo Sala
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