This book offers, in Italian, the story of Sir Peter Smithers’ life. An extraordinary life, dedicated to politics and gardening, always lived in a privileged position to observe the spectacle unfolding on the world stage. A volunteer in the Navy at the outbreak of war, he joined the British Secret Service, first in Paris, where he witnessed the French surrender, then in Washington during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and finally in Central America. After the war, he devoted himself to politics, eventually being appointed Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

He has always been a passionate gardener in his spare time, as he did when, as a boy, he tended his flowerbeds at his parents’ house and at school, or when he tended his gardens in North and Central America, in England, and in Strasbourg, right up to his creation in Vico Morcote, on Lake Lugano. A book in which an attentive reader will not only find useful tips for growing peonies, magnolias, lilies, nerines, daphnes, and many other beautiful plants, but which also presents, in a very British and pragmatic way, an existential philosophy that finds in the knowledge of nature one of the best ways to approach a deeper understanding of life.