I Visited the Botanical Dry Garden: An Enchanted Visitor’s Experience

The sound of footsteps on gravel, a wooden structure with a heavy door, a gate with a violin key separating the outside world from the magical land of the dry garden. When I arrived at the Botanical Dry Garden, these were the first things I noticed from the outside. I headed towards the wooden house that houses the offices and savored the rustic air that could be breathed, hoping to soon return in front of that musical little gate and cross it. Something told me that once I reached the entrance of the park, some strange truth would reveal itself. And so it was.

Anyone who crosses the threshold immediately understands that peace is found inside. It is not only the oriental music that gives the place a zen atmosphere, but also the evident harmony between human action and nature. This is what I felt when I visited the Botanical Dry Garden. I am not just talking about aesthetics, the evident attention to the beauty that the environment has to offer, the interest in art in all its forms, or the strength with which a company founded on solid principles is run.

What struck me most about the Botanical Dry Garden, the company, and the family behind it is its philosophy. A conceptual position that is not abstract at all, but instead translates into a sincere and pragmatic attention to nature and respect for ecosystems, making this space and the company that supports it something more than just a patch of green, but a place of peace where one can also perceive the serenity of nature, where it is free and respected and can take a sigh of relief.

The Botanical Dry Garden is first and foremost a garden, a showroom that displays plants and lawns with low water requirements suitable for the Mediterranean climate. The park extends over four hectares and, within its enormous surface, you can find anything: plants to beautify the garden, vegetable gardens, olive trees, but also art, music, and creativity. Numerous art installations are scattered everywhere, you can enter the greenhouses and observe the birth of the seedlings, walk barefoot on the lawns and choose the one best suited to your garden, discover hundreds of different varieties of the same plant – you will find rosemary plants in all colors, from white to pink – and learn that nature has many more secrets than we think.

In the park there are countless structures, from a tower designed to view the entire surface from above, to the garden of the elements, from the cypress walls that hide art, to the maze – still under construction – made with the most beautiful plants in the garden. You do not go there just to buy something, but also and above all to know, to understand, to learn.

The concept of the Botanical Dry Garden

The Botanical Dry Garden was born with the idea of doing good to nature. The plants and lawns that the dry garden offers are suitable for an increasingly less rainy climate and make maintenance simpler, cheaper, and more ecological. The lawns, for example, are only irrigated once or twice a year, allowing you to save about 80% of the water needed for traditional lawns, doing good to the environment… and your pockets!

In addition to the possibility of buying the right plants and lawns for your needs, the Botanical Dry Garden also allows you to create wonderful projects for your garden. The attention to beauty is always constantly in synergy with respect for nature: the innate characteristics of the plants are used to achieve certain shapes or arrangements, without forcing them into unwanted pairings and without the need to prune them every day. This is because – and if you decide to visit it, you will feel it immediately – in the Botanical Dry Garden one lives in complete harmony with nature and learns from it.

The artistic and sensory path

If you go there with the intention of buying, the park staff will always be available to help you choose the solutions best suited to your needs. But if you go there to learn, book a guided tour, I assure you it is worth it.

Access to the park is allowed to anyone who buys a symbolic entrance ticket, but if you have the opportunity to visit it in a group of about ten people, book a guided tour and a garden expert will be made available to you, who will guide you through all the secret corners and show you everything there is to discover.

The art installations are that added value that makes the place much more than just a huge garden. And the sensory path, then, will amaze you. Crossing the park together with an expert guide will allow you to discover plants you did not think existed and smell their magnificent fragrances. You will see what nature can do, how the presence of one plant protects another, how the roots of different trees communicate and exchange information, as if they were a huge neural system extending for miles beneath our feet. And you will discover what the philosophy of the Botanical Dry Garden is, the most precious aspect of the entire park.

The philosophy of the Botanical Dry Garden

I was lucky enough to visit the Botanical Dry Garden accompanied by Luca, the owner of this wonderful place, and it was enough for me to listen to him talk about his garden to understand its true philosophy.

While he showed us the characteristics of a lawn and illustrated the projects under construction, we visited the theater: a structure in which the plants create the space for the audience and the trees give shape to the stage and the wings, and inside which in summer shows and concerts are organized. In describing it to us, Luca explained that the seats for the audience – benches made with pipes – are positioned so that they look like a violin when viewed from above. He said it as if it were the most incredible feature of the area, but that is not the thing that struck me most.

He told us that when they built the theater, some old greenhouses were decommissioned, and that to truly respect the environment, nothing can be thrown away. For this reason, the benches for the audience were made with the material from those old structures. What seemed to me a precious detail, a sincerely ecological gesture, he told it without dwelling on it too much, proving how much, in the philosophy of this place, respect for nature is fundamental but natural.

It was another moment, however, when I understood that nature, there, is truly honored. Once, someone told me to distrust fields or lawns without insects. That the presence of bees is not only functional to the reproduction of plants, but that it is proof of the health of that area. And that happy insects, living in truly respected gardens, do not care about the human presence and do not harm us.

While we were walking through the park, Luca approached a rosemary plant and explained that at that time the bees are so intoxicated by its flowers that they are harmless, and you can even pet them. Then, before our astonished eyes, words were followed by deeds: he brought a hand close to the plant and delicately petted a bee with his index finger. The insect did not even notice and continued its industrious pollinating.

Well, it was at that very moment that I understood. I understood that all the greenwashing in the world will never compete with those who truly care about the health of the environment. I understood that only those who are at peace with the ecosystem surrounding them can have the audacity to intentionally touch a bee with their bare hands without fear of being stung. And only those who truly respect nature, its needs, and its rules, can expect that it will respect them in return.