Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Public Gardens
Plantsmen rather than architects were the heroes of 19th-century gardens thanks to garden-
ers such as the Rovelli brothers, who worked for the Borromean family. Experts in cultiva-
tion and hybridisation, the brothers ran a nursery on the side at Verbania Pallanza, where
they sold some of the Count's 500 varieties of camellia.
It also became the fashion for aristocratic families to send their gardeners and land-
scapers on educational voyages around Europe. One of the earliest examples of this is the
trip Archduke Ferdinand (1754-1806) took between 1783 and 1786 with Ercole Silva
(1756-1840). Ercole was primarily a writer, but oversaw a number of garden designs in
Milan, including the Palazzo Reale overlooking the Giardini Pubblici, Villa Litta in the
suburb of Affori and Villa Reale at Monza.
This growing exchange of information popularised gardening as a pastime. The Rovelli
brothers even published a catalogue on camellias while others, such as the Roda brothers
working for the House of Savoy in Piedmont, wrote gardening manuals and features for
monthly magazines. New horticultural societies were established in Piedmont and Lom-
bardy, nurseries proliferated around Milan and Padua, and space was cleared for public
parks in Milan, Turin and Venice. Finally, with the Unification of Italy in 1861, a new
middle class began to emerge, keen on tending their own small patch of paradise.
A BOTANICAL BENT
Renaissance gardens flourished against a backdrop of scientific discovery. With human dissection new on the syl-
labus at Padua University, students of medicine were rapidly gaining a greater understanding of anatomy and
physiology and coming to terms with the shortcomings of existing medical texts, many of them dating back to the
1st century AD. What's more, merchant ships docking in Venice were starting to offload strange and exotic plants
along with medicinal herbs, which were fetching prices just shy of gold and spices in the Rialto market.
This new interest in botany, and the fabulous specimens (such as maize) arriving from voyages of discovery such
as those by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and 1493, captured the popular imagination of villa owners who
coveted rare plants for display in their newly designed gardens. Aristocratic families like the Medici's, Este's and
Borromee funded many early botanic gardens and, through their patronage, plant collecting developed into a full-
blown mania in the 17th and 18th centuries.
At Villa Monastero on Lake Como, African and American palms tower above groupings of agave and dragon
trees. Aubergines were introduced from Asia and tulips from Persia and some 80,000 bulbs, representing 65 variet-
ies, are planted at Villa Taranto on Lake Maggiore. Although there was a fashionable element to plant collecting,
the trend was part of a wider intellectual landscape of discovery. Count Vitaliano IX Borromeo, who introduced
species from China, New Zealand, India, the Himalayas and South America to Isola Madre, was a serious and pas-
sionate botanist, as was Baroness Antoinette Saint Leger who transformed San Pancrazio, the larger of the Isole di
Brissago, with thousands of exotic specimens into an enormous island garden.
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