The 2019 "The most beautiful park in Italy" competition ended a few days ago with the announcement of the winners: the Turin Royal Palace of Venaria Reale for the public parks category and the Fattoria di Celle park for private individuals. GardenTV interviewed the directors and managers of the two parks, telling them how the most beautiful green spaces in Italy are managed.
VENARIA REALE
"This award is a reward for the efforts that have been put in place to create a very ambitious project, but also to the philosophy that has allowed the gardens to be reborn completely lost, with their contemporary compositional and architectural language", comments the arch. Maurizio Reggi, Conservation Gardens Manager of the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale.
A work, he adds, that has been able to bring out "the characteristic traits, re-proposing the axial, the alignments, the perspectives and the visual connections, identified as elements that define the matrix of the design that characterized the garden of Venaria and also recovering the references with the surrounding landscape context ».
Not only that: the prize - explains Reggi - also enhances «the organizational model adopted for the management and enhancement of the garden through a system capable of managing the garden with staff directly employed. Human resources become the strength of the system where the professional growth of gardeners allows to increase the quality and attention to detail in the management of the garden ».
Which professional figures are involved in the care of the park?
The management of the garden is entrusted to the Conservation Gardens office, which deals with the organization of maintenance, enhancement and development of new garden projects. The maintenance of the gardens is entrusted to a team that reports directly to the Consortium of Royal Savoy Residences.
How many gardeners do their maintenance and how is their work organized?
The team is currently composed of 4 gardeners with permanent contracts, 12 seasonal gardeners.
On the basis of budget availability, the annual program is established which concerns routine maintenance and garden improvement measures.
We then move on to seasonal programming, and then gradually we come to define the weekly program where the teams are organized according to the interventions to be performed and each gardener is entrusted with a daily task.
How is the available fleet composed?
The machinery is very complex and allows all maintenance operations to be carried out. To name but a few, tractors are included, machines for cutting lawn with operator on board and push, and the main types of manual equipment.

Are battery operated equipment also used?
For several years we have been using hedge trimmers, hoes and scissors with battery power.
In addition we have supplied, for the movements in the garden, professional electric powered machines.
How big is the park?
The property covers an area of 80 hectares of which 50 are recovered as gardens.
Are there any extraordinary maintenance projects in sight?
A project has been prepared to expand the surface of the garden in the area of the so-called High Park with the construction of the second English garden and two other groves and a space to house a greenhouse.
Which aspect of the park are you most proud of?
When it was decided to proceed with the recovery of the gardens and its characteristic features, the testimony of its ancient Potager represented a fundamental piece. Unfortunately, its original location is now occupied by a school and the flight field of the army helicopter group and therefore outside the perimeter available to the gardens.
Fortunately, within the estate of the complex there was an area suitable for hosting the Potager. An area in the lower park where in the mid-nineteenth century a farmhouse called "Cascina Medici del Vascello" was built, an area then dedicated to agricultural production in the past, also abandoned and disused after the Second World War.
The intervention, which covers an area of 10 hectares, organized in four areas, two of which for horticultural production and two for fruit production, has set itself the goal of reviving the atmosphere of the place with a particular attention to the composition and proportions of the individual elements that allowed us to recall and interpret the historical images of reference. Therefore, the aesthetic and refinement aspects that can be encountered in a space often considered "service" and re-proposing some of the elements have been highlighted.