After the mountainside yesterday, it was the lakeside today, to Villa Carlotta, Tremezzo, to admire the camelias and the rhododenrons. Our timing was perfect. Everything was in flower; blazing oranges and mauves and reds. But the star of the show, to my mind, was a massive wisteria vine that had been trained up a nearby tree (picture). From below, the conjuring trick is perfect and the glorious wisteria seems to be a free-standing tree in its own right. Wisterias soon develop thick trunks but the one that holds up this monster is like an elephant’s midrift. The villa was a present to Charlotte of Prussia from her mum. Alas, Charlotte died in 1855 in child-birth at the tragically young age of 24. Her husband, George II of Saxe-Meiningen, turned his passions to the Villa’s gardens among other things.