New meeting atUni Tre of Sanremo: at 4.00 pm in the former council room of civic MuseumFriday 19 April the doctor Ursula Salghetti Piacenza will tell his essay “The garden of Villa Boccanegra in Ventimiglia: a historic acclimatization garden“.
TO Ventimiglia, a few kilometers from the border with France, there is the Boccanegra Garden4 terraced hectares sloping down to the sea, an exquisite example of acclimatization of plants coming from Mediterranean climates from all over the world.
The first traces of the estate date back to 1554, but it is above all in the last two centuries that the various owners have contributed to giving it its current appearance: among these, the parliamentarian Giuseppe Biancheri, who in 1865 purchased it from the Genoese marquises de Mari, a friend of Thomas Hanbury and his head gardener, Ludovic Winter, who introduced many roses, including the banksiae which still decorate the dividing wall from the Via Aurelia; between 1906 and 1923 Ellen Willmott, a rich English heiress and landscape designer, built two water reserves, laid out paths and walkways, planted all kinds of exotic species, date palms and a row of eucalyptus.
In the second half of the 1950s, Mario Sertorio, a Piedmontese paper industrialist, created a second terrace-belvedere, after the original one overlooking the garden and the sea, the opus incertum paving in front of the house and the stone paving of the path and the greenhouse nearby to the orchard garden, and enriched the ornamental greenery near the house.
Subsequently inherited by the Piacenza family, who in the Biella area had created the famous Burcina park on the hill behind the factory, today a special natural reserve of the Piedmont Region, in 1983 Boccanegra finally passed into the capable hands of Guido Piacenza and Ursula Salghetti Drioli, both excellent botanists .
Starting from 1983, the current owners have removed the spontaneous Mediterranean plants and those that had naturalized, taking over the “noble” vegetation, trying to bring the garden back to the sense that Ellen Willmott had wanted and to bring to light the exotic and valuable.
Subsequently, they introduced countless new species, mostly from Australia, South Africa, Chile and California, often obtained from seed, struggling with the extreme summer aridity of the garden and the shallow, sloping soil.
Ursula Salghetti Drioli Piacenza graduated from the University of Pisa in Natural Sciences with a specialization in Marine Biology Algology.
From 1974 to 1987 he carried out research on marine plant populations at the Inter-university Center for Marine Biology in Livorno.
In the following years he focused his activity on nursery and garden care.
She was President of the AdiPA Association for the diffusion of plants for amateurs for two terms, organizing the Murabilia market exhibition in the city of Lucca.
She was General Secretary, and now Vice President of the Friends of the Hanbury Botanic Gardens. She takes care of and promotes the Boccanegra family garden in Ventimiglia where she maintains the national collection of South African Aloes and Pelargoniums, and introduces new plants from other Mediterranean climates of the world: South Africa, California, the Canary Islands.
She has been awarded the following awards:
- Mario Calvino Award – Sundial for greenery – Murabilia Murainfiore – Il Giardino Fiorito
- Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society Motivation
- Verdemente Murabilia Murainfiore Award
- Gallesio Award Associazione degli Inquieti, with her husband Guido Piacenza.
Tags: Uni Tre Sanremo hosts Ursula Piacenza essay gardens Ventimiglia
