The first idea of a large garden on the western bank of the stream is due to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Having chosen Parma as its capital, in the mid-sixteenth century Ottavio united several vegetable areas and made it the park of a villa in turn obtained from an ancient pusterla. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in that garden grew hedges of rosemary and myrtle, and then oaks, plane trees and alpine fir trees, fruit trees and vegetables, as well as many citrus trees in pots, sheltered in winter in heated huts. Ponds and groves supplied the court with fresh fish and game. The construction of the pond was commissioned by Ranuccio II who, in 1690, wanted to represent a naumachia to celebrate the wedding of his eldest son Odoardo with the daughter of the Elector Palatine. The extinction of the Farnese family in 1731 led to the total degradation of the garden. In 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, the secular trees in the garden were cut down and burned to fuel the fires of the troops. Only with the arrival of Don Filippo di Borbone, in 1749, Parma recovered the rank of capital and was commissioned a project for the reconstruction of the park. Starting in 1753, it was the young French architect Ennemond Alexandre Petitot.