Village Gardeners
The site of the garden is idyllic: a hillside in northern Italy, overlooking
Lago Maggiore and with the foothills of the Alps as a backdrop. However, as our
January speaker Mr Collen, explained, when Captain McEacharn set out in 1931 to
build the Botanical Gardens of Villa Taranto the hillside was clothed in
robinia and chestnut scrub. It required a small army to clear the trees and to
shape the contours to provide the varied habitat he needed for the plants he
was to collect from around the world. Over the following 30 years the latter
involved some 20,000 species and cultivars.
During many visits in recent years, Mr Collen has watched as the project approaches maturity. Through his slides we toured the many gardens which make up the whole. We looked down vistas created by the maturing trees, sometimes towards the distant mountains, sometimes to a well placed statue and again sometimes along a bank of flowering rhodedendrons, azaleas and camellias. I am sure I was not the only person present thinking "Yes, I'd like to see those Gardens".
It is unfortunate that our monthly meeting comes a day or two after the Crier copy deadline so the next relevant meeting will be on 17th March when Richard Ayres (retired head gardener at Anglesey Abbey) will be speaking on "Fun with herbaceous plants"