Flower Gardens at CityLife, a large educational garden in Milan
From the collaboration between CityLife and the Associazione Orticola di Lombardia, as part of the urban redevelopment project of the Fiera district of Milan, the “Flower Gardens” were born.
Over an area of approximately 3000 square metres, in large geometric flowerbeds, arranged together to form a broken path, made up of straight sections and right angles, almost like a labyrinth, vegetables and ornamental plants alternate, arranged in long rows and inclined at 45 degrees.
A particular project was created in the CityLife Flower Gardens, intended to have a demonstrative and educational purpose in the first place, and an aesthetic purpose secondly. In fact, the project is inspired by the tradition of our country, still alive in small towns, which envisaged that everything needed for the home was grown in the gardens, from vegetables to aromatic herbs, to plants intended for producing household tools, such as seeds for carding wool or herbs for weaving baskets, together with flowers and leaves to decorate tables and altars, but also to perfume rooms or linen.
Alongside the more traditional vegetables, including tomatoes and aubergines, chard and fennel, there are also flowers such as asters and zinnias, dahlias and marigolds, which have always been characteristic of vegetable gardens; among the traditional but now rare crops, in the flower gardens you can still find castor and Jerusalem artichokes, amaranth and alkekengi, horseradish and mountain celery.
