VGCC Offers Class on Gardens of Europe

Vance-Granville Community College will offer a unique class this summer that provides the next best thing to visiting the gardens of Europe. The ten-week Garden History course will be held on Tuesdays, starting June 5, from 3 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. on the college’s main campus in Vance County. Instructor Giulia Vitale of Warrenton will examine the events and the ideas behind the design of European gardens, focusing on those in Italy and her native England. Vitale lived in Italy for more than a decade and holds a Master’s degree in Italian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.The course features slideshow presentations for each period of garden design, as well as paintings, poems and extracts from famous books and essays of the time. Vitale will start with the Roman gardens of 2,000 years ago and trace the development of gardens through the Baroque fantasies of the 16th century, the Renaissance and into the twentieth century. The course includes a field trip to see an Elizabethan-style garden.“It’s a tour through history, as well as an armchair guide to some of the loveliest places in Europe,” Vitale said.The cost of the course is $37.50.For more information and to register, call Donna Dodson at (252) 738-3316.