They say that travel broadens the mind.  If that is the case, then my mind has been stretched to the breaking point by a three week trip to Italy, my wife’s birthplace.  We feasted on la dolce vita in Rome, had a spiritual and reflective time in Assisi, soaked up the sun and the scenery in Cinque Terre on the Ligurian Sea and enjoyed the dynamics of la famiglia during our final week in the region around Venice.  It was all outstanding.
The plantsman in me was also fully engaged as we toured around the country.  Italy, of course, enjoys a temperate climate for the most part.  Summers are hot and winters are relatively mild with only rare mornings below zero.  I found landscapes strikingly similar to our own Okanagan and Fraser Valley.  But I also saw plants that were completely unfamiliar to me, as well as those which I knew very well, but used in wonderfully different ways.
For example, our garden centre sells both Hisbiscus syriacus, the hardy hibiscus and Albizzia julibrissin, the mimosa tree.  Both are winter hardy in the valley bottom.  There are not many mimosa trees in local gardens, but the hibiscus is a very popular flowering shrub.  In Italy the hibiscus is used extensively as a street tree in towns and cities, where it grows to about 6 metres high.  Imagine a street lined with these in full bloom, it’s enchanting.
I was very surprised and delighted one morning on an excursion in the newer part of Assisi down on the valley bottom to see Albizzia planted on the main thoroughfare, with a few of the trees covered with the hot pink, “powder puff” blooms.
Oleander could be seen in nearly every location that we visited.  I compare it to the lilac in our area, that’s how often it is used.  You see it used as a barrier between roads, as hedges and in containers.  The difference is that oleander stays in bloom for months, not weeks.  In the first week I was tempted to take pictures of every large group of blooming plants that I saw, but I finally realized that a full memory card of oleander was not a wise use of the camera.
We have begun to carry Lagerstroemia, the Crape Myrtle, on a limited basis in the garden centre now that hardier varieties are available from nurseries in California, but in Italy they make stunning small trees up to 6 metres high, full of bright pink cone-shaped clusters of blooms and found on streets, private gardens and in public places.
A row of Chamaerops humilis, Mediterranean Fan Palms, planted in a boulevard alongside a street in Ostia, a suburb of Rome, made a lasting impression on me, and I noticed them in many other settings, including on the lawn at the home of my wife’s aunt in Ghirano.  Her driveway is lined with a 4 metre high hedge of Laurus nobilis.  We know it as Bay Laurel or Sweet Bay, the popular cooking herb.
Perhaps the most exciting plant discoveries I made were during a hike in the Dolomite Alps.  The alpine flowers were in full bloom and at nearly every turn on the steep and rocky trail I saw plants that we sold as perennials back home; scabiosa, aconitum (in both blue and yellow), arennaria, groundcover geranium and centaurea.  To see them growing in their native environment was a delight.
It was a fabulous trip on every level, and I’ll enjoy the memories until we return.