The garden is similar in size to many of the great Italian Renaissance-style gardens created for the nobility and it was built on a terraced area of land. It includes a small building that intermittently served as a residence for families.

This suggests that the area was designed for leisure and for savouring the countryside, as a recreational villa for the dukes and as a hunting ground. Any annexed areas were simply add-ons of no particular importance.

The garden’s current physiognomy developed over the course of the transformations that have taken place since 1567 aimed at making the most of the estate’s financial resources. Clear examples of this include the construction of the pond as a source of water for irrigating the garden and orchards. Any leftover water was used to run the fulling mill near the edge of the estate. Other important resources included the orchards, the chestnuts which were collected for sale and the fields for grazing cattle.