Breathtaking Garden at a Tuscan Farmhouse Italy

Set on 160 acres in Tuscany, the grounds around Keith Johnson's centuries-old farmhouse were once a chestnut farm — and the old trees are still there, holding on. Keith spent 25 years as buyer at large for Anthropologie, traveling to markets from the Philippines to New Delhi.

He and his husband Glen, former CEO of the company's parent group, already had a Georgian house in England. They came to Tuscany looking for sunshine and something more casual, and bought this place the day they first saw it — Glen decided based on the gates alone, before they'd even driven up. The garden climbs in levels, and Keith has given each one its own purpose to pull you upward.

He'll admit the exercise is part of the appeal. Sculpture punctuates the terraces, and much of the stone came from a local man whose entire trade is walking into the forest and finding rocks with character. Keith bought half a dozen of different sizes; the man arrived with a truck and unloaded them. There's an infinity pool with a view straight out across the valley, and a cactus garden still very much in progress. There's a pizza oven Keith commissioned from a stonemason named Said, built to match the walls and chimneys of the house so precisely that it reads as original.

Glen cooks constantly, and the pizza is the center of a great deal of their life here. And there's a stone table, fifteen feet long, cut from a single piece and weighing an extraordinary amount. Getting it in required angling it under the pergola and swinging it into place with a truck-mounted lift. Keith closed his eyes. He has since declared a firm policy against buying any more incredibly heavy things.

His favorite spot on the whole property is a simple bench. He takes his coffee there, watches the sun come up over the Apennines, and calls it the best view in the house.

The old chestnut trees are struggling now. Even the trunks of the ones already gone strike him as works of art.