Over two thousand meters of garden that winds through fragrant plants, fruits, seats in Lecce stone, the sound of water from a fountain, the singing of birds and a path designed ad hoc so that people with visual impairments can walk it independently: it is the Sensory Garden created in the Botanical Garden of Salento, thanks to the Lions Clubs International Foundation and the Lions clubs of Puglia.
Named after the American writer and activist Helen Keller (it was she, deaf and blind, who convinced Lions Clubs to become “knights of the blind” in 1925), the Sensory Garden is a project curated by the landscape architect Monica Botta, professor at the Faculty of architecture in Milan and expert in therapeutic gardens, and by the agronomist Fabio Ippolito, technical-scientific manager of the Botanical Garden of Salento.
“The sensory garden was designed especially for the blind, with a path that can be enjoyed in total autonomy thanks to a handrail rope and be” read “in an immersive experience through all the senses, smell, taste, touch, hearing but also sight, because it wants to be an inclusive garden, also populated by attractive plants from an aesthetic point of view, to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy an open space, even more so to those who lack a sense – says Monica Botta , author of the book “Dear garden, take care of me” (LDN, 2018) – nature has a great power to bring together, to eliminate differences and distances. To accompany people to use the garden, a tactile map has been placed at the entrance that allows them to give information in relief and written in the Braille alphabet. We worked on the sensory aspects, in particular with flower beds of Mediterranean aromatic plants that give rise to strong olfactory sensations, such as lavender, sage, santoline, helichrysum, thyme and artemisie. Then plants that can be touched, with velvety foliage like Mexican sage (Salvia leucantha), horned poppy or yellow poppy (Glaucium yellow), Asparagus aethiopicus, with an elongated and feathery shape, some varieties of holly (Ilex aquifolium), the very tenuous Nassella, with a golden and very voluminous crown of leaves, which, walking beside it, caresses you as if they were angel’s hair, but also a Kneipp circle, with surfaces of bark, sand, lawn and smooth white pebbles, to be walked without shoes and very popular with children. Then there are edible plants, such as strawberry tree, jujube, pear, quince, apple, pomegranate, pergola grapes, and mulberry, a very common plant in the Salento farms. Finally, the sensory one is also a garden to listen to; not only is there a “sound pool” immersed in the magenta of the ground cover lantane, whose gush conveys a sensation of refreshment, but there are wind chames, real “wind chimes” hanging from trees, even of Roman inspiration, which ring when shaken by the wind, and above all artificial plants and nests that attract songbirds, robins, great tit, octopus and other passerines. A garden that can transmit significant psychophysical benefits to the blind, but also to Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases ».
In the Sensory Garden we also find allochthonous evergreen trees and shrubs, such as theEugenia myrtifolia, now reclassified as Syzygium austral, the very fragrant Acacia farnesiana, better known as gaggìa, in bloom in October, the plum of Natal (Carissa macrocarpa), the Grevillea robusta, the Acca sellowiana, a plant native to Brazil that produces fruits with a sour and fragrant taste, the Brachychiton populneus or Kurrajong, which in the Dharuk dialect stands for “fishing line”, because the Australian aborigines traditionally used the bark of the tree to make lines, and the camphor tree (Camphora glandulifera). The Sensory Garden closes to the north by a grove of native species, such as holm oaks, ash trees, Aleppo pines, cypresses and mastic shrubs, blackthorn and viburnum viburnum, in which a small hut has been placed for listening and observing the birds.
The Botanical Garden of Salento covers an area of about 13 hectares on the eastern outskirts of Lecce, in a peri-urban context, easily accessible from the city yet in the countryside, between old sheep pastures and dilapidated farms. Inside it houses one of the now relict areas of pseudosteppa in feathery fairy linen (Stipa austroitalica), enriched with spontaneous orchid blooms. It was born in the early 2000s, first as a satellite structure of the University Botanical Garden, established in the 90s of the twentieth century as a green museum area and to support research on plant biology of the University of Salento, and became an autonomous Foundation in 2006, with the participation, as well as the University, of the Municipality of Lecce and ISPE-Lecce. Both Lecce gardens collect the legacy of what was the first Botanical Garden of Lecce, which was built in the nineteenth century as an appendix to the Economic Society of Terra d’Otranto. It was in the heart of the city, near the railway station; it was a botanical garden with an ornamental but also agricultural vocation: a rectangle of three hectares in which different varieties of grapes, cotton, cereals, potatoes, tobaccos were grown. It played an important role in the spread of the mulberry tree and, above all under the guidance of Gaetano Stella (to whom we owe the cataloging of the 480 species present at the time), it established itself as a place of encounter, culture, experimentation, as well as the sale of products and “Very rare plants of very selected fruits and flowers” mostly coming from the Botanical Garden of Naples. Years of progressive decline followed and the “most beautiful garden in Lecce” ended up being erased from the buildings. To remind us of its existence, few plant traces remain, in the area next to the Chamber of Commerce: an imposing example of Paterson lagoon, a small group of Walloon oaks, two ancient field elms, a Washingtonia filifera, an Araucaria and some centuries-old white mulberries.
“Our Botanical Garden aims to enhance the spontaneous flora, offering the possibility of getting to know, in a limited area, all the plants of the Mediterranean scrub and the pseudosteppa – explains Fabio Ippolito, technical-scientific manager of the Garden – we are a a bit like a museum of Salento landscapes. Through microhabitats, we have recreated the typical botanical landscapes of Salento, with about 700 plant species, including wild and introduced ones. Here there are endemic or exclusive species of Salento, such as Iris revoluta, which grows only in the rock of the island of San Giovanni in Gallipoli, or endangered species such as the thorny sarcopoterio, of which there are few stations in southern Italy and in the two major islands. There are species of phytogeographic interest, such as the anfiadriatiche, which we find in Puglia and then in Greece, Albania, Croatia or Turkey, such as the vallonea oak, the thorny oak (Quercus coccifera) or the Apulian heather (Erica forskalii). This is because we are at the western limit of the eastern Mediterranean ».
Next to various types of Mediterranean scrub, with myrtles, mastic trees, thorny brooms, cysts and phyllireae, we find a grove of cork oaks, a species present in the Brindisi area, the Virgilian oak, which is a southern variant of the more known downy oak, the holm oak, but also more hygrophilous groves, with southern ash, white poplar, elm, tamarisk and chaste tree.
Great importance is given to the protection and enhancement of biodiversity in the agricultural field, especially of the ancient cultivars of fruit plants, which can be found in the old farms or in the noble gardens of the villas, and which risk disappearing. The ficheto preserves about 70 different varieties of figs, each with its own specific name (such as the Melpignano fig), or which differ in terms of ripening period, type of fruit, color or size. The same goes for pome fruit and stone fruit, present in about thirty varieties; what about the plum tree for example Wonder of Calimera, a rustic plum also known as Heart of donna for the shape of the fruit? In the “field of minor fruits” walnuts, rowan trees, pomegranates, jujubes, azzeruoli, carob trees are grown. A specific project, “Biodiverso”, curated by the University Botanical Garden, is dedicated to typical vegetable species, such as the dwarf pea from Zollino, the carrot from Tiggiano and that from Polignano, the onion from Acquaviva, the chicory from Molfetta, the tomato of Manduria, the melon of Gallipoli and that of Morciano.
www.fondazioneortobotanico.lecce.it
www.fruttiantichipuglia.it
www.biodiversitapuglia.it