It’s a magical event, which overflows with passions, studies, love, joy and beauty, collected and handed down by centuries of aristocratic traditions of the Italian garden, that, from the mid-sixteenth century, has made history in the world .
In this unique annual occasion, many precious and refined know-how are exposed so that everyone can admire them closely, with even the option to purchase some small treasures: a little joy to take home.
Orticola Exhibition and Market keeps alive and protect the Italian spirit of the garden.
The year 2016 hosted many varieties: one young sapling of an oak “unique example in the world ” discovered in Puglia; a collection of 45 types of mint; one of juniper; one of pomegranate, fuchsias, new hybrids of rhododendrons in preview, unusual species as Chloranthus and Radbosia, the Kokedama spheres of musk and mud to host orchids and tropical plants .
Flowers and plants in pots or in small green areas such as terraces and balconies. Pottery and Italian marbles were featured as historical containers to create, today, a small oasis of green in all our private spaces, even the smallest.
Francesca Marzotto Caotorta
Founder of the exhibition Orticola and President of the Organizing Committee is Francesca Marzotto Caotorta, considered the Queen of the Gardens. Landscape designer, she studied design of gardens in England. She was the founder and first director of the famous Italian magazine Gardenia.
Gianluca Brivio Sforza
She is accompanied by the President Gianluca Brivio Sforza, fond of botanics from an early age, and today engaged to organic farming, and by Filippo Pizzoni, landscape architect and historian of the garden, specialized in conservation of historic parks at the University of York, who, in addition to teaching and design, is vice president of Orticola.
All of them works with clear and moving passion in order to pursue the culture of beauty and the defense of the natural territory. In this unmissable event they succeed, year after year, in setting up a spectacular blend of technical, artistic skills, opportunities for the delight for young and old, educated or random visitors.
Darlingtonia Californica
Ross Mint
Blue Orchid
Orticola is a non-profit organization and this is why it manages to be free from commercial obligations and may also expose small nursery with bulbs, plants and flowers that are the results of genuine enthusiasts’ research. Orticola wants to promote and spread the culture of originality as opposed to mass consumer.
In a time when the interest in the earth and its crops is returning, it is also catching on a floriculture able to create new beautiful flowers and to recover the forgotten wonders that have made famous the Italian tradition of the Garden of Europe at the time of the Grand Tour.
Examples are the timeless Italian roses, bred in Italy by Italian growers, beautiful as the English and the French ones, but still poorly known, although suited to the climate and the Mediterranean Garden..
The XXI edition of Orticola Exhibition and Market, brought together 160 nurseries exhibitors, and offered cultural initiatives related to the promotion and protection of the Italian garden.
The Gallerie d’Italia and the Museum Poldi Pezzoli promoted the “Orticola at the Museum”, welcoming the public of Orticola with guided tours on historical, artistic and botanical paths. The exhibition “Genius and Memory” took place within a new Orticola Lombardia green project for the city.
Guests of “Fuori Orticola” were: Marco Nones and Alison Grace Martin, artists with their woods and their bamboo; the Academy of Science and Letters, Commonly Green and the Botanical Museum.
Since its first edition, Orticola of Lombardia has donated the profits of the Exhibition and Market to the city green areas. According to the agreement signed in 2014 with the City of Milan, in the three-years program, Orticola will trie – on some of the city’s flower beds – to reduce the costs that the Administration has to face for their maintenance, keeping at the same time a high aesthetic level of the flower beds and informing the citizens on the plants used to make them.
Inauguration of the XIX edition of Orticola Exhibition.