A praise to the glorious gardens of Como Lake
From the creative forge of our publishing house, a new prestigious publication has been born - Glorious Gardens Lake Como - entirely dedicated to the gardens of Lake Como, an area where art history, landscape architecture and botany have allowed the creation of countless villas, parks and historic gardens of disarming beauty.
Many of the gardens that you will find in this volume, created in a pocket-sized format, full of photographs and with texts in English by a renowned landscape architect, Roberta Peverelli, are part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani network.
Below the introduction by the president of Grandi Giardini Italiani, Judith Wade:
«The beauty of Lake Como is as indisputable as is the uniqueness of its gardens. Due to the microclimate created by the protective steep hills and mountains surrounding it, together with the richness of its soil, the lake area offers ideal conditions for acclimatising exotic plants as well as a home to a rich and varied collection of native trees and flowers. Over the centuries Lake Como has attracted famous and wealthy visitors many of whom have bought properties and created waterfront gardens for the pleasure of entertaining. Some of these were refined plant collectors, others simply wanted to show off. Either way we can now admire these Glorious Gardens threaded all around the lake like diamonds in a precious necklace.
I asked Roberta Peverelli to describe these gardens since she perpetuates the tradition of generations of her family members who have designed, maintained and cared for many gardens on Lake Como for almost a century. She was raised with garden owners and gardeners alike and many of the trees and plants represent old friends to her. This booklet is intended to be a souvenir to take home, enclosing fragments of an Italian heritage covering over 500 years of garden history as well as an insight into the high standards of Italian gardening on Lake Como. Just as for our predecessors, these gardens offer us rare moments of peace and well-being and inspire us with their tasteful colour combinations, attentive maintenance and magnificent landscaping. Many of the gardens included in this publication belong to a network called Grandi Giardini Italiani and are open to the public (our offices are in Villa Erba, Cernobbio). In 2017 we launched Como - The electric Lake, an initiative to install recharging stations around the lake, with the cooperation of Tesla. Como is the birthplace of Alessandro Volta (1745 - 1827) so we felt it our duty to promote sustainable tourism and not only Horticultural Tourism, to honour the illustrious scientist who created the first electric battery.
If you are on holiday do allow time to visit these gardens, preferably by boat, to admire the plants and flowers blooming along the shore, spilling down the hillsides in a jubilation of colour. Just in case you don't have time to see them all take ''Lake Como - Glorious gardens'' home with you as a reminder to come back!»