Flowers Fair from 25 to 1 st May at Orticultura Garden in Via Bolognese, Florence, Italy. It is a must to go for the fantastic. Greenhouse by Rooster and the blend of flowers smells in the air.
The founding of a Tuscan Society for Horticulture to try out and promote new methods and spread the culture of the garden and market garden, was proposed by the Georgofili Academy in 1852.
Changes in the economic and social conditions of the time, in particular, the need to feed an ever-growing urban population, necessitated a radical change in the concept of “the garden” as a complement to the countryside.
The Society’s activities would be conditioned throughout by its financial difficulties, a result above all of the high administrative costs and insufficient income from its commercial activities.
Its beginnings started well before it owned a garden with exhibitions, publicised abroad,being held in the gardens of the Palaces of the Florentine nobility.
It was only in the 1860s that the Society succeeded in purchasing a farm holding beyond the parterre of San Gallo, in the vicinity of Pellegrino.
Covering more than two hectares, south facing, it was crossed by the railway which divided the flatter land to the south from the hillier land to the north, the so-called “la montagnola”. The presence of farm houses on the land would also be of use to the Society although it was immediately feared and indeed confirmed that problems would arise from its distance from the city and maximising its potential use.