This garden was set up for the purposes of education, scientific study and conservation, offering a chance to study the local flora and admire rare and autochthonous species. The garden’s modern subdivision into habitat beds is a perfect way to learn about and explore otherwise hard-to-access habitats.
Conceived in 1972 by University of Padua Professor Giovanni Giorgio Lorenzoni, to whose memory it is dedicated, and by Giovanni Zanardo, Inspector of the State Forestry Corps, the gardens were inaugurated in 1995, and are under “Veneto Agricoltura” management. Centrally-located on the Cansiglio Plateau, the garden occupies a two-hectare expanse of limestone at an altitude of some 1,000 metres above sea level that is divided up into multiple levels of beds, meadowland, pastures and wooded areas, offering a microcosm of the vast, orographically-complex border area of the Prealpi Carniche Cansiglio-Col Nudo-Cavallo mountainous massif. Showcasing a number of highly-diverse habitats, it is located between the Alpine and Dinaric-Balkan biogeographic regions, straddling the provinces of Belluno, Treviso and Pordenone. The area’s Alpine foothills, just beyond the Venetian plain, ensure abundant rainfall from humid oceanic currents, resulting in high levels of biodiversity and generally lush vegetation. The garden has collected close to a thousand species of plants exclusively from the uniquehabitat of centuries-old forest on the Cansiglio karst plateau, and from the Col Nudo-Cavallo mountain massif. Alpine environments, wetland vegetation, beech, spruce and fir woods, medicinal plants, arid environments and numerous threatened species are all on featured.
Highlights
Habitats
The garden’s alpine habitats include typical Italian types known locally as firmeto, seslerieto, mugheta, ghiaioni and macereti, as well as small snowy valleys and rocky vegetation; humid habitats include molinieto and peat bogs, while woodland formations include beech woodland (Fagus sylvatica), spruce woodland (Picea excelsa), and silver fir woodland (Abies alba).
Endangered Species
The flower beds showcase a great many endangered species: Drosera rotundifolia, Rhynchospora alba, Iris cengialti, Hottonia palustris, Gentiana pneumonanthe, Menyanthes trifoliata, Cypripedium calceolus, Lilium carniolicum, Primula wulfeniana, and Alyssum ovirense.
The Cansiglio Plateau
The forest of San Marco and the Cansiglio Woods cover some 6,000 hectares of karst plateau, riddled with complex underground hydrographical features. During the Republic of Venice, the woods were known as the “bosco da reme di San Marco”, its rich beech forest used to manufacture oars for galleys.