GREENER GARDEN GATE

GARDEN TOUR

Find out each week's theme

Each week this September I spent three to four days exploring a corner of northern Italy. I focused my explorations in different areas of interest from Agritourism farms, to horticultural institutions, and comparing public and private villas and sculptural parks along the way.

My travels this late summer were bookended by a long weekend in London to begin the trip and a similar end-cap to the adventures on Fishers Island the first week of October.

I began my travels exploring the Queen's gardens of St. James park. In particular I visited the traditional cottage garden, or a rather traditional portager garden.

Northern Italy GardenTour
August - September 2024

DESTINATIONS

St. James Park, London, UK
Nuova Terraviva Association, Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, Italy
The Botanical Gardens of Padua, Italy
Agricultural School of the Monza Park, Italy
Murabilita Horticultural Festival, Lucca, Italy
Garzoni Villa and Pinnochio Park, Collodi, Italy
Reggioli Agrotourismo, Gaiole in Chianti, Tuscany Italy
Botanical Dry Garden, Orbetello, Grossetto, Tuscany Italy
Sacro Bosco Monster Park, Bomarzo, Viterbo, Lazio, Italy
Villa Borghese, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Fisher's Island, New York, United States

Learn more

GARDEN TOUR Chronicle ~ Settimanale

Weekly Journal of Summer Scholarship Work Experience. Weekly, 3-4 days I dedicated to botanical gardens, school, and events focused on central Tuscany retracing my roots, and creating new paths.

1.St. James Park London

2. Terraviva- Ferrara- Emilia Romagna

3. Padua Botanical Gardens- Emilia Romagna

Monza - Lombardy

Lucca- Italy, Murabilita

Garzoni Gardens, Collodi Italy

Reggioli- Gaiole in Chianti in Italia

Orbetello, Grosetto, Italy

Saturnia Necropolis

Rome - Lazio - Italia

Bomarzo, VT Italy

Fisher's Island- USA

Week 1 - St. James Park, London, England

Learn more about St. James park

The park in London contains a real live menagerie of different fowl and various sweeping ornamental beds.

I walked through the different areas of the beds and plantings of the Queen's garden

Week 2: Terraviva, Emilia Romagna, Italy

La Nuova Terraviva Association gardens encompass four hectares dedicated to agriculture. Designed by the Renaissance architect, Biagio Rossetti, the addition of the garden in 1457 envisaged a countryside within the city and its growing extension proceeding from the Castle (of San Michele) towards the city walls. This large area has been preserved for 500 years and now offers the community a weekly CSA produce box, a didactic farm with livestock, an apiary and a functioning pizza oven.

Nuova TerraViva Association

The first week of my trip in Italy I spent two days volunteering at the Nuova Terraviva Association in Ferrara, Emilia Romagna Italy. I shadowed the staff clearing the early summer crops of tomatoes, and squash, integrate compost in to the soil and harvest from the turnover for the CSA clients.

Terra Vivia Association is an educational farm and community garden that offers CSA membership, classes, and workshop for youth. The website states,

"this rare piece of countryside within the walls… is the only case in Italy of such a large space (4 hectares) also dedicated to agriculture. In the Renaissance plan by Biagio Rossetti, the addition of 1457 envisaged a countryside within the city and its growing extension proceeding from the Castle (of San Michele) towards the city walls.

This large area has been preserved for 500 years. After the Second World War, the Municipality of Ferrara purchased it in 1987 from a private individual, allowing the preservation of a vast “emptiness” that gives such a sweet beauty to walking in the countryside… while staying in the city."

Using a systematic technique to yield a higher harvest by air layering in to a dome trellis of the raspberry vines to produce more and create a new physical shape to the garden.

Week 2: Botanical Gardens of Padua

I visited Padua's botanical garden which included not only various temperate and aquatic gardens but access to herbarium sheet, a museum, and specimens dating back more than 500 years.

Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico), Padua

“The plan is a perfect circle, subdivided into four units by orthogonal paths, oriented according to the main cardinal directions. When the four entrances were re-designed in 1704, the wrought-iron gates leading to the inner circles and the four acroteria were placed on eight pillars and surmounted by four pairs of wrought-iron plants.”

Cardinal Map

Water Garden

Greenhouse View

Lineage Tree of Horticulture

Examining Herbarium Sheets in the Licrart

Goethe's Palm

Padua Botanical Garden

Botanical Gardens of Padua

While visiting Emilia Romagna and working on the didactic farm I spent a day visiting the Botanical Gardens of Padua a half an hour away from Ferrara and the Este Gardens were I was based.

The world's first botanical garden was created in Padua, Italy in 1545. It still preserves its original layout – a circular central plot, symbolizing the world, surrounded by a ring of water.

Greenhouse for Goethe's Palm surrounded by Lily ponds,
"a source of inspiration for the famous German author, who saw and admired it in 1786 prior to writing his botanical essay Metamorphosis of Plants."

A UNESCO World Heritage Site - The Botanical Garden of Padua has two important collections: the library that contains more than 50,000 volumes & manuscripts of historical and the Herbarium, which is the second most extensive in Italy. Particularly rare plants were also traditionally collected and grown in the garden. Currently, there are over 6,000 species, arranged according to systematic, utilitarian and ecological-environmental criteria, as well as thematic collections.

Week 3: BAM & Vertical Garden, Milan

Gae Alluenti Piazza, BAM, Vertical Gardens

I spent the day touring the Library of Trees, Biblioteca dei Alberi Milano, BAM, by Inside Ouside,Petra Blaisse with a bio dynamic fish ponds, landscaping by Piet Oudolf and the two residences of Stefano Boeri's Vertical Forest

Inspired by the designer:

" The Vertical Forest is the prototype building for a new format of architectural biodiversity which focuses not only on human beings but also on the relationship between humans and other living species. The first example, built in Milan in the Porta Nuova area, consists of two towers that are respectively 80 and 112 meters high, housing a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones, 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs), providing an amount of vegetation equivalent to 30,000 square meters of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square meters of urban surface." -

Stefano Boeri

Week 3: MONZA, Lombardy, Italy

From Milan as a home base I visited the town city of Monza and the Agricultural School of the Monza Park, the school offers many courses from Arboriculture, to Floral Design.

Adjacent to the school are the royal gardens of Monza, the Villa Reale of Monza, that contain:

"over 40 hectares... a pond, a rock garden, the Antro di Polifemo (Polyphemus cave) and a classical temple. - Serrone orangery and the Rose Garden, boasting 400 varieties of roses."

Boulevard named after female founder

Eager to explore the school founded in the early 1920s by Aurelia Josz who created an academic horticultural space for young aspiring women that is now coed.

Regal Grounds

Adjacent to the agricultura school is the UNESCO site of the Regal Palace of Monza and estate which are now a series of public gardens,

Academic Ambiance

Academic professional staff that range in backgrounds rich in arboriculture, horticulture, and floristry to name only a few of the many focuses and career oportunity paths.

Traditional Hertiage

Monza is a walkable and welcoming city with long shade boulevards and a park offering a wide spectrum of recreational activities, sport, and leisure allow within minutes of the historic old town center.

Efficiency

Integrated curriculucum that helps foster civic engagement and is the pride of the Lomardy region while teaching sustainable techiniques just outside the hustle of rome

Multifunctional Space

Campus is open to the public and visitors can tour the grounds and take a moment respite a local cafe offer wines from surroundings. During the summer youth camp occupies the garden grounds

La Vigna di Leonardo - Leonardo da Vinci's Vineyard

Leonardo da Vinci's Vineyard is a vineyard the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Maria Sforza best known as Ludovico il Moro, gave as a gift to Leonardo da Vinci in 1498 while he was working on the painting of Last Supper in the nearby refectory of the cathedral and Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Intricate Details

Private Urban Oasis

Vertical Green Cloister

Affresco Artwork

Old world Design

Sculpture Highlights

Week 4: Agricultural Conference Murabilita- Lucca

Specialized Italian and foreign nurseries offering a wide range of plants, including rare, ancient, and new cultivars, fruit plants, equipment, crafts, and food and wine products. Murabilia event in Lucca features cultural, botanical, and horticultural programs with exhibitions, conferences, guided tours, and workshops.

Week 2: Garzoni Villa & Pinnochio Park, Collodi

Including many works such as the “Pinocchio & the Fairy”, the monument by Emilio Greco and many great artists of the 20th century, like the Piazzetta dei Mosaici by Venturino Venturi,Pietro Consagra’s sculptures, to Marco Zanuso’s Pinocchio.

In the 18th century, the Garzoni were a powerful family from Pescia, of Ghibelline stock, who had suffered the confiscation of their property, banishment and exile.
iThey fled to Luccese hills and they rose to the highest State offices. The age-old taste for provocation and defiance led them to build a villa here on the ancient boundary between the Grand Duchy and the Republic of Lucca.

Week 3: Botanical Gardens of Lucca, Tuscany

Botanical Gardens of Lucca Photo Gallery

The Lucca's Botanical Garden is the most precious garden in Lucca and extends for two acres in the southeast corner of the old town. Founded in 1820 by Maria Luisa of Bourbon, Duchess of Lucca, it is a scientific institution that preserves living collections of plants in a path of colours, sounds and smells that brings you around the world, illustrating both specimens from distant countries and treasures of the local flora and biodiversity.Here are photographs from my visit to the Botanical Gardens of Lucca, in Tuscany.