Thu Sept 3 – Enjoya in Pistoia
Thursday morning began with a drive back to Pistoia, with a first stop at Matteini Tranquillo Nursery, owned by husband and wife, Maria Matteini and Tiziano Nesi. They live and work from the 18th century villa on the property, which is certainly one of the more amazing nursery residences/offices I’ve ever encountered.
This “small” 20-acre woody plant nursery, featured an array of plants grown either in the field, or in huge 4’ wide pots, used primarily in landscape projects around Europe. I was surprised to see that red-tipped photinia, Photinia x fraseri is still an important nursery crop here. I was also surprised that Colorado blue spruce, Picea pungens, grew so well here, in what was likely a Zone 9 climate. I was also particularly impressed the columnar black pine, Pinus nigra ‘Green Tower’.
We found a lunch stop nearby, Ristorante Rafanellii, which to our delight, was truly superb, before heading down the road for our tour of Vannucci Piante.
Plantipp (Concept Plants) is a Dutch plant marketing firm, and their Italian representative, Matteo Ragni, had arranged to meet us there, and tour us around with Vannucci Sales Manager, Marco Bussi. To say the nursery was over the top, would be a grand understatement. Many of the plants at the nursery were grown in huge sizes…something rarely seen in the US. Row after of row of plants, being grown in 4’ and 5’ diameter pots were the norm. If there has ever been a nursery that lived the motto “Go big or Go home”, it’s Vannucci.
Nothing Vannuccii sells would be considered rare, but that didn’t mean they weren’t impressive. Their top selling plant genera are: Cupressus, Elaeagnus, Hesperocyparis (Leylands), Photinia, Prunus, and Trachelospermum. At any one time, however, they have 350 taxa in production on their 2347 acres, which has over 55 miles of roads. It was fascinating to learn that the town of Pistoia sits on a huge underground aquifer. In addition to pulling irrigation from lakes, they also have many 75’-100’ deep wells, that each produce a staggering 450 gallons per minute.
Vannuccii fills a huge European demand for mutilated and tortured plant specimens, from clipped spiral and pom poms to braided crape myrtles, which are purchased from growers in China, and finished off in Italy. Their most impressive crop were hundreds of full-size, ancient Japanese bonsai. The Vannucci staff scours Japanese Gardens several times each year, purchasing mature bonsai plants from home gardens in Japan, digging them bare rooted, and transporting them to Vannucci, where they are re-established in giant, open-bottom pots. Once re-established, they are sold around the world for high end projects, in the range of $50,000 Euro each.
The plant loading docks were amazing. Vannucci does not own a transportation fleet, instead relying on common carriers to transport its plant material across the EU, and beyond. Trucks pull into one of several massive loading docks, where plant orders have been assembled. There, the trucks are lowered via hydraulics into a pit, which making loading with a forklift easier. Vannucci’s plant stacking techniques allow them to load the trucks much fuller than many of their competitors.
Something else I’ve never seen is their huge, several acre, high-end greenhouse, where customers can go and see each of their plant offerings in one place.
After our exhaustive tour, we returned to Lucca for a lovely dinner with our friends, Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones of Crug Farms, and UK Garden guru, Rosie Atkins and her husband, Eric. Rosie was the former curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, and founder of Gardens Illustrated Magazine.
Part 5 coming tomorrow!