Spring brings with it the start of a new eco-tourism experience: that of garden tourism. A niche tourism that I started to discover last year thanks to the initiative organised by the Associazione Amici del Giardino Lucio Viatori and which will shortly, in May, bring about twenty garden lovers from Germany to the region. I will have the pleasure and the good fortune to accompany them for five days among the most magical and least known gardens in the region. We will mostly go to visit private gardens, normally not accessible to the public (or in some cases only once a year during the “Giardini Aperti” event) and not included in traditional tourist circuits.

We will be guided by the owners with whom the group will have the opportunity to chat and discuss the theme that has motivated them to come to Friuli Venezia Giulia for the first time: the art of gardening, understood in its most complete meaning. Every garden has its own soul that distinguishes it from other gardens, and it is this soul that the garden tourists want to understand, study, observe, investigate and evaluate.

We will start the tour in Gorizia visiting the Giardino Lucio Viatori, known to most people as the garden of azaleas, for the different varieties present and which among other species boasts the largest collection of magnolias nationwide; the garden of the Villa de Nordis, a fascinating historical jewel hidden in parkland, and then we will pop over the border to Solkan and visit a beautiful cottage garden and the rose garden of the monastery of Kostanjevica.

Then we will move to the province of Udine to visit a beautiful and romantic rose garden near Artegna, the fortified medieval village of Villafredda, with private access, which has two small but gracious gardens to show, as well as a beautiful private church and finally, two more private gardens that will offer us menus based on roses and other edible flowers.

A whole day will be entirely dedicated to Trieste, with castles and a walk in nature, and where we will not miss the guided tour of the rose garden of the Parco di San Giovanni, which with its five thousand varieties of roses, is the largest rose garden in Italy.

Last year, thanks to the themed education tour, I had the pleasure of visiting all these gardens privately with a cultural and naturalistic approach, as well as with a passion for flowers and plants. The door to this form of slow tourism that is widespread elsewhere was thus opened to me, both in Italy and abroad; it is an area into which our region has much fertile ground to expand.

A garden tour (I like to call it a floral voyage) is something I recommend to everyone; it does not matter if you are not a connoisseur or a passionate gardener. If you love nature and you like being outdoors, then you will also love travelling slowly through the blossoming gardens and you will understand that they have much to communicate to the visitor. Each garden is an oasis, a magical place that stimulates our senses, giving us peace and serenity and if we learn to observe it with due respect, it will make us feel at one with the plants and animals we share space with at that time. A garden is the fruit of patience and loving dedication and tells us stories of sounds, smells, shapes, colours and transformations. It is a jewel of creativity, design and chromatic harmony. Visiting a garden means to be immersed in it, walking through it and getting lost and losing track of time. Every plant, every flower has its own identity and its history, sometimes very old.

I have learned to look at “cultivated” nature with different eyes and with a renewed sensibility; it is a different nature to the spontaneous and wild nature in which I usually walk and lead my companions, but it still manages to fascinate me, because, even if helped, nature is free to give its best, offering something new and wonderful every season. It includes the pleasure of losing oneself among paths and borders following smells, perfumes, colours and listening to everything moving around. Of being guided amid berries, buds, fragrances and attuning oneself with the earth, the insects, birds. A garden is life, it is movement and it teaches us to become attentive observers. This is in my opinion the essence of a floral voyage!

Whatever your destination in the region, you will find the gardens suitable for an authentic garden experience: you will be amazed at how many different species of plants exist, how much history is contained in their name, how much study there is behind the creation of a garden. And if a particular flower has pleasantly impressed you, you can take home seeds or buds prepared by the owners home with you. In this way, you will have an original floral souvenir of our beautiful region.