On the occasion of the national campaign dedicated to “Gardens and Parks” launched by Italia Nostra, the Tuscan Archipelago section organized a walk in the Giardini delle Ghiaie, in Portoferraio, for members. The event was made particularly interesting by the competent guide of Marco Rinaldi, an international expert in pruning and management of large trees, who showed and described plants in distress, penalized by unsuitable interventions from an arboreal point of view: “we are probably the last European country that continues to damage such an important resource for our future with taxpayers’ money.” The idea of focusing our attention on the Ghiaie gardens, in addition to the certainty that for many of us Portoferraians it is an iconic place, came from recalling an article that the architect had written. Landscape designer Maria Pia Cunico, after a visit to the Gardens. We propose it again below, because we consider it still relevant, especially in this phase of great electoral tension.
“Starting from the garden…..for me this is often the rule for tackling other topics; starting” from the garden of the city, as a place of nature and beauty, but also as an urban place par excellence. So why, to talk about the quality of life on the island, in particular Portoferraio, to talk about decorum, protection, ways of living the city well every day of the year, not starting from its public gardens? containers of nature but also and above all of beauty, all in fantastic positions, where, as soon as there is a bit of sun, it is always a pleasure to spend a few hours in the open air?
Generally speaking, these are the cities that are overturned by summer tourism, with very tight times of use and forgotten seasons, the cities where the day, all turned towards the sea, also dictates the rules of daily life which seems to stop from April to October, in an overbearing way, almost cheeky. Gardens, on the other hand, are there for all seasons, knowing how to enhance them, knowing how to love them, day by day, returning to them, inhabiting them, experiencing them in different ways, as children, as elderly people, as tourists, as ordinary citizens.
It is certainly nice to see how many Elbans love walking in the Ghiaie or climbing to the Fortresses; but why do we have to settle for a walk shared with parked cars, beneath a miserable “tree-lined avenue”, too wide to be a promenade and too narrow to be a garden… to then arrive at the large public garden of Gravels?
Why sit on the benches in the shade of the large trees, where you can’t see the sea which is just a few meters away, but instead you can see the parked cars and scooters?
I think of many seaside cities on the French coast or in other Mediterranean countries, where greenery is an integral part of the urban landscape, where the promenades along the sea are many gardens, even small ones, often strips of green, between the sand and the city… but what a marvel of trees and flowering plants!
The Ghiaie garden could return to being at the center of city life, a public garden no longer separated from the seafront by tangled and messy bushes but become part of it; it should provide shade after a few hours spent on the beach, it should offer lawns to lie down in, but also corners of flowers, scents and colors where you can rediscover your relationship with nature.
It should be a “green heart” from which a series of pedestrian “promenades”, some also cycle paths, could start, rearranged so as to become pleasant walks: the “classic” promenade of the existing Viale delle Ghiaie, but restored and refreshed with new trees, bushes, furniture, and a clear separation between cars and walking. Another pedestrian route could go up from Ghiaie to the bastions of Forte Falcone, recovering ancient paths that once existed and allowing you to connect the two most beautiful parks in the city and overlook some truly unique panoramic points in the world.
I am therefore thinking of a kind of network of green paths that starting from, or arriving from, the Ghiaie park could connect other green spaces, recovering and revitalizing them, but also connecting the beaches, the memory spaces of the city, the port, hypothesizing a kind of large seafront that could be joined to a possible “Parco delle Saline” until ending in San Giovanni.”
Nature has made priceless treasures available to us: we just need to be able to make the most of them.
To aim for this objective, which applies to a large part of the beauties of our city, we simply need to be aware of it and act accordingly; we hope that this basic concept will be the heritage of those who will manage the new Administration of the Municipality of Portoferraio.
OUR ITALY
Tuscan Archipelago section
