Verbania, Italy — Even as a group of flower lovers flitted around the high-ceilinged room admiring freshly cut camellias with fanciful names like “Pink Lassi” and “Paradise Petit,” a single petal remained They danced lazily on the paneled wooden floor, forming a colorful mountain.
“You just look at the sasanqua, and the petals fall off,” says Gianmario Motta, president of the International Camellia Association and one of the world’s leading experts on sasanqua, a type of camellia native to Asia that blooms in winter. To tell.
In fact, these camellias were the star of the winter camellia exhibition in Verbania, a lakeside town in northern Italy not far from the Swiss border, booked for just one weekend and only briefly in the spotlight before wilting. .
But if this exhibition in a 19th-century villa was necessarily short-lived, Verbania’s managers are concerned about the growth that has flourished on the lake since it first appeared almost 200 years ago. He has more ambitious plans for plants related to plants. In recent decades, the cultivation of camellias, as well as other ornamental plants such as rhododendrons and rhododendrons, has become a mainstay of the local economy, and the lush gardens and parks of Verbania and its surroundings are a haven for lovers of nature, especially plants. It attracts many people.
The camellia “is an outstanding thing of Lake Maggiore and Verbania,” the town’s mayor, Silvia Marchionini, said at the exhibition’s opening in late November. “The region’s history and floriculture are valuable assets that should be cherished and grown,” she said, adding that authorities are working to strengthen Verbania’s tourist season beyond the traditional March start with spring blooms. she added.
“2023 was a great year for Verbania and for camellias,” said Motta. His International Camellia Society, which promotes knowledge, cultivation and development of camellias, held its biannual world conference here last spring, where camellia enthusiasts visited local gardens and learned about petal blight and other plants. They took turns presenting papers on disasters.
The city of Verbania has also opened a public camellia park displaying hundreds of varieties of camellias in the gardens of villas next to the town’s auditorium on the lake. A room dedicated to books about camellia will open in the villa itself, which will also serve as the town’s library. The park was dedicated to Pietro Hillebrand, a local expert known as the “Gentleman of the Camellias” who passed away in 2019.
“We do this for passion,” said Valeria Sibilia, president of the Verbania Garden Club, which helped establish the park since 2000. One afternoon in November, she gently scolded a group of Pakistani cricket players assembled among the villa’s early plants. They left cheerfully. “It’s important to be respectful of plants,” she said.
The love affair with Lake Maggiore and this hardy plant began not long after the camellia first arrived in Italy. Legend has it that camellias were introduced to the Bourbon rulers of Naples by British naval commander Horatio Nelson around the 1780s (to be honest, the dates vary slightly historically).
Daniele Bosi, Italian director of the International Camellia Association, said the plant’s origin (mainly from Japan) “gave it a certain aura” of exoticism, and he immediately started collecting the plant. It became a favorite of the aristocrats who gave it as gifts. It was easily spread as a gift.
By the mid-19th century, “camellia mania” had penetrated the bourgeoisie. Its popularity coincided with the Risorgimento, as the Unification of Italy was known. Nurseries and breeders dedicated new camellias to leaders of the movement, including Giuseppe Garibaldi (two varieties are dedicated to him) and Victor Emmanuel II and his descendants.
In addition, the main colors of the camellia – white and red, and the green of the leaves reminded me of the Italian flag. “I think that’s one of the reasons why camellias became more popular during unification,” Andrea Corneo, president of the Italian Camellia Association, explained at last year’s conference.
In Lake Maggiore, camellias thrived in a mild microclimate and acidic soil suitable for their growth. Wealthy residents near Milan and Turin filled the well-kept gardens of their villas with ornamental varieties, competing to create the richest collections.
It wasn’t always rosy. There was a lull in popularity in the early 1900s, followed by a resurgence of interest among Italian hobbyists in the 1960s, and on Lake Maggiore camellias are now grown not only in private gardens, but also in courtyards of apartment buildings, roundabouts, and many other places. Flowers are also blooming in public areas.
Mr Corneo said a recent visitor from the UK was surprised that camellias were such a prominent part of the city’s greenery. Where she comes from, he says, “they’re relegated to botanical gardens and considered rare.”
Corneo and his family own Villa Anelli, one of the oldest camellia gardens in Italy, with dozens of camellia species, including 50 winter camellias. Antonio Sevesi, founder of Villa’s collection, co-authored the International Camellia Registry, which compiled varieties that are still in use today. Corneo provided several varieties that are being planted in Verbania’s new camellia park.
Last spring, camellia enthusiasts from all over the world visited Villa Anelli and other historic gardens to admire rare specimens.
At Savioli’s nursery, perched on a hill overlooking Verbania, the group wandered through some 700 ancient and modern camellia varieties. “No one knows what this bee mated with,” said Lara Savioli, daughter of one of the nursery’s owners, pointing to a multicolored camellia with different shades vying for attention. I said while doing so. “It’s a bit of chaotic pollination,” she said.
Tourists from overseas were also impressed.
“It’s unbelievable. It doesn’t bloom like this in America, and it doesn’t bloom this much,” said Mark Crawford, a plant pathologist in Valdosta, Georgia. “Our climate is very different.”
Crawford is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on a project to import camellia rhododendrons from China, and the plants have been quarantined for two years in Beltsville, Maryland, because they can host citrus pests. There is. So “they’re in jail,” he said with a laugh. “There are really strict rules.”
Another conference attendee, Forrest S. Latta, a lawyer in Mobile, Alabama, said he used to grow camellias in his hometown, but Verbania’s camellias are larger and grow at higher elevations that mimic the slopes of mountains in China. He said this was due to good sunlight and good drainage. Japan is the birthplace of many varieties. “The camellia is in heaven, so we are in heaven,” he said. “People who are looking for the Uffizi Gallery for camellias will come to a place like this,” he added of Florence’s famous gallery.
“Tourists who care about botany have always been present in Verbania, which for many years has made a living from plant nurseries and their export,” he said in Verbania, which is considered a botanical garden. Roberto Ferrari, director of the botanical garden Villa Taranto, said: Italy’s finest gardens. It is one of Verbania’s main tourist attractions, along with the Borromean Islands, which are named after the family that still owns his two islands, both of which are rich. It is landscaped with a botanical garden. According to Mayor Marchionini, the province of Verbania receives more than 1 million tourists a year, making it the second most visited tourist destination in Piedmont after Turin.
“In recent decades, we have invested heavily in tourism thanks to our wonderful landscapes, nature, beaches, cycling trails and historic hotels,” she said in an interview. “It’s not just our identity, it’s also our economic scenario.”
“We are a little paradise,” she said.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.