Even because the group of flower aficionados flitted round a high-ceilinged room admiring just-clipped camellias with fanciful names like “Pink Lassie” and “Paradise Petite,” single petals floated lazily to the paneled wooden flooring, forming colourful mounds.
“You only have to look at a sasanqua and it loses its petals,” mentioned Gianmario Motta, the president of the Worldwide Camellia Society and one of many world’s main specialists on the sasanqua, a camellia species native to Asia that blooms throughout the winter.
Certainly, these camellias’ star flip because the protagonists of the Winter Camellia Exhibition in Verbania, a northern Italian lakefront city not removed from the Swiss border, was booked for a mere weekend, a short second within the limelight earlier than they withered away.
But when the exhibit, showcased in a Nineteenth-century villa, was essentially short-lived, Verbania’s directors have extra bold plans involving a plant that has thrived on the lake because it made its first look right here nearly 200 years in the past. In current a long time, the cultivation of camellias, in addition to different decorative vegetation like azaleas and rhododendrons, has grow to be a mainstay of the native economic system, whereas lush gardens and parks in and round Verbania have attracted legions of those that respect nature, significantly vegetation.
The camellia “is the excellence of Lake Maggiore and of Verbania,” the city’s mayor, Silvia Marchionini, mentioned in opening the exhibit in late November. “The history and the floriculture in this territory represent a valuable asset to be cherished and also to grow,” she added, as officers work to bolster Verbania’s tourism season past its conventional begin with spring blossoms in March.
Mr. Motta chimed in that “2023 was a great year for Verbania and for the camellia.” His Worldwide Camellia Society, which promotes data, cultivation and improvement of camellias, held its biannual world congress right here final spring, with camellia lovers alternating visits to native gardens with the presentation of papers on petal blight and different plant catastrophes.
Verbania additionally inaugurated a public camellia park that includes lots of of types within the backyard of a villa abutting the city’s auditorium on the lake. A room devoted to books on camellias is anticipated to open within the villa itself, which can also be the city’s library. The park was devoted to Pietro Hillebrand, a neighborhood knowledgeable often known as “the gentleman of the camellias,” who died in 2019.
“You do this for passion,” mentioned Valeria Sibilia, since 2000 the president of the Verbania Backyard Membership, which helped set up the park. On a day in November she gently scolded a bunch of Pakistani cricket gamers who had arrange amongst a number of the nascent vegetation of the villa. They cheerfully moved away. “It’s important to respect the plants,” she mentioned.
Lake Maggiore’s love affair with this hardy plant took off not too lengthy after camellias first arrived in Italy. Lore has it that camellias had been launched to the Bourbon rulers of Naples across the 1780s by the British naval commander Horatio Nelson (in truth, the dates are a bit off, traditionally).
The provenance of the vegetation (largely from Japan) “gave camellias a certain aura” of exoticism, mentioned Daniele Bosi, director for Italy of the Worldwide Camellia Society, and so they shortly grew to become a favourite of the aristocracy, who collected and gave the vegetation, which propagated simply, as items.
By the mid-Nineteenth century, “camellia mania” had trickled all the way down to the bourgeoisie. Its reputation coincided with the Risorgimento, because the unification of Italy is thought. Nurseries and breeders devoted new camellias to the motion’s leaders, like Garibaldi (two cultivars are devoted to him) and King Victor Emmanuel II and his offspring.
Furthermore, the dominant colours of camellias — white and purple — plus the inexperienced of the leaves had been reminders of the Italian flag. “We think that is one reason the camellia became so popular during the unification,” Andrea Corneo, the president of the Italian Camellia Society, defined on the congress final 12 months.
On Lake Maggiore, camellias thrived within the gentle microclimate and a soil with an acidity conducive to their development. Rich residents from close by Milan and Turin crammed the landscaped gardens of their summer time houses with decorative varieties, vying to create the richest collections.
It wasn’t at all times rosy. There was a lull in reputation within the early 1900s, earlier than Italian fanatics revived curiosity within the Nineteen Sixties, and on Lake Maggiore, camellias now flourish not solely in personal gardens but in addition in condominium courtyards, roundabouts and plenty of different public areas.
Mr. Corneo mentioned a current customer from England had been stunned to search out camellias to be such a outstanding a part of the city greenery. The place she got here from, “they’re relegated to botanical gardens and seen as a rarity,” he mentioned.
Mr. Corneo and his household personal the Villa Anelli, one of the historic camellia gardens in Italy, with dozens of species, together with 50 winter camellias. The founding father of the villa’s assortment, Antonio Sevesi, co-wrote the Worldwide Camellia Register, a compilation of types that continues to be in use right this moment. Mr. Corneo supplied a number of of the cultivars planted on the new camellia park in Verbania.
Final spring, camellia fanatics from world wide traipsed by way of the Villa Anelli, in addition to different historic gardens, to admire uncommon specimens.
On the Savioli nursery on a hill overlooking Verbania, the group bought misplaced amongst some 700 camellia varieties, each historic and trendy. “Who knows what this bee crossed with,” mentioned Lara Savioli, the daughter of one of many nursery’s house owners, pointing at a multicolored camellia the place numerous hues vied for consideration. “It’s a bit of an anarchic pollination,” she mentioned.
Guests from overseas had been impressed.
“It’s incredible. They don’t bloom like this in America, they don’t bloom this profusely,” mentioned Mark Crawford of Valdosta, Ga., a plant pathologist. “Our climate’s so different.”
Mr. Crawford is working with the U.S. Division of Agriculture on a undertaking to import camellia azaleas from China, and people vegetation are quarantined for 2 years in Beltsville, Md., as a result of they could be a host to a citrus pest. So “they’re in jail,” he mentioned with amusing. “There are real strict rules.”
One other congress attendee, Forrest S. Latta, a lawyer from Cellular, Ala., mentioned that whereas he grew camellias again dwelling, these in Verbania had been larger, which he attributed to larger elevation, extra daylight and drainage that emulates the mountain slopes of China and Japan, the place many sorts originate. “The camellias are in heaven, so we’re in heaven,” he mentioned. “If one were looking for an Uffizi for camellias, they’d come to a place like this,” he added, referring to the well-known gallery in Florence.
“There’s always been tourism attentive to botany, and it’s always been present in Verbania, which for many years lived off plant nurseries and their exports,” mentioned Roberto Ferrari, the director of Villa Taranto, a botanical backyard in Verbania that’s thought-about one among Italy’s most interesting gardens. It’s amongst Verbania’s main vacationer points of interest, together with the Borromeon Islands, named for the household that also owns two of them, each landscaped with wealthy botanical gardens. With greater than 1,000,000 guests a 12 months, the province of Verbania is the second most visited attraction in Piedmont, behind Turin, mentioned Ms. Marchionini, the mayor.
“In recent decades we’ve invested a lot in tourism because of the excellence of our landscape, nature, beaches, cycling paths and historic hotels,” she mentioned in an interview. “It’s not just our identity, it’s an economic scenario.”
“We’re a little paradise,” she mentioned.
