Murabilia 2019

Every year in the first weekend of September the city walls of Lucca on the bastions of San Regolo, La Libertà, in the Botanical Garden and in the basement of the walls host Murabilia, the market exhibition of quality gardening, one of the most important Italian events dedicated to flowers, plants and gardening.
About 250 specialized Italian and foreign nurseryman exhibitors with an offer that ranges in all sectors of the plant world with special or newly introduced plants, old and new cultivars, equipment and furnishings.

In Murabilia you meet enthusiasts and professionals with the big names in international gardening.
For visitors there is a remarkable cultural, botanical and horticultural programme, with thematic exhibitions, conferences, new publications and workshops open to all. An opportunity to get to know the Walls of Lucca in a particularly suggestive period of the year.

Here is a quick excursus for a weekend of nature, art and culture.

The theme of the year

Impossible to exhaust in a single edition, the theme "Looks to the East. Japan" returns strong of the success of the 2018 edition. The main theme will therefore again be the Far East, its plants, its traditions and rituals that have always shown the Japanese people a deep interest in nature in all its expressions. In how many ways can we talk about Japan and plants? Really many, but you have to learn a vocabulary that includes names known as bonsai, ikebana and origami and names still new in Italy, such as medaka (small collectors' fish), marimo (a curious seaweed wrapped in a ball), koinobori (beneaugural flags in the shape of carp).

Murabilia 2019 will be the occasion for an elegant, curious and certainly joyful approach to Japanese culture, also thanks to all the plants of Japanese flora that have entered our gardens and the heart of gardeners: from maples to anemones, from chrysanthemums to bamboos, up to some precious collector's orchids that, for the occasion, will have a space of honour in the greenhouses of the botanical garden of Lucca.

Guests

Murabilia confirms its vocation to be the Italian crossroads of international gardening. Between Baluardo San Regolo and Baluardo La Libertà, the botanical garden and the gunboats will host world-class figures such as the Russian botanist Michail S. Romanov and the American plant hunter, nurseryman and writer Daniel J. Hinkley who has chosen Lucca for his only conference in Europe.

And then personalities of European reputation such as the Transylvanian gardener Razvan Chisu who directs the English magazine The Saxifrage magazine, the French collector Olivier Colin, the English tree specialist and writer John Grimshow, the Dutch landscape architect Abraham Rammeloo who directs the most famous European arboretum in Belgium and others.

Art and nature

The protagonists of the botanical illustration exhibition Botalia, as always set up in the greenhouses of the botanical garden of Lucca, will be Ernesta Caterina Albanese and Luigi Zulian from Vicenza, both emerging artists in the very special field that is the pictorial interpretation of plants for the use of botanical science.

A beautiful exhibition not to be missed, because it is unique in its kind, is the one that exhibits a collection of works - some ancient and precious - of the iconography of pine in Japanese art curated by the artist, acclaimed bonsai artist and art teacher Carlo Cipollini (he taught for 42 years at the Art School of Lucca). Art, agriculture and rural culture instead in two exhibitions dedicated to traditional tools, one curated by the Cultural Association La Ruota, the other of huge tools, out of scale, made by the blacksmith artist Giuseppe Barsi from Camaiore.

Meetings

We will talk, of course, of plants that since in the scientific name remember the Japanese origin with the specific appellation japonicum, nipponicum etc.. If the TV master gardener Carlo Pagani will tell the wonders of many of our gardens, the agronomist Maria Cristina Pasquali will emphasize instead on plants that, starting from Japan as ornamental species, have settled so well in Italy to behave like weeds in our natural environments, have colonized the banks of streams and roadsides, the fallow, the escarpments.

We shall then talk about the Leghorn gardener, Ursula Salghetti Drioli, who, in the last months, has won the prestigious Veitch Memorial Medal, awarded every year by the English to those who, in the international ambit, have given a contribution to the advancement of gardening in the world. We will talk about tropical and subtropical plants that, with climate change, have become cultivable in Italy, national collections compared between representatives of different nations, the recovery of the historic Garzoni Garden in Collodi.

An entire section of Murabilia will then be dedicated to the review Piante e saperi, with the presentation of new books in the sector in the presence of the authors and witnesses, including the latest book by the well-known Lucca writer Pia Pera, who died prematurely in 2016, and "Apprendista di felicità", published last May, will be the journalist Emanuela Rosa Clot, director of the monthly magazines Gardenia and Bell'Italia.

The new recruits

Careful to bring up new generations capable of knowing and attending the botanical culture, Murabilia this year introduces the Young Gardening section with some initiatives aimed at involving young people. For children there is also the Murabilina sul Baluardo San Regolo section, with an entire programme on the afternoons of Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September between 2.30 pm and 6 pm, which includes workshops, a small library, a snack, and a visit to the child-friendly stands. The organizers of Lucca Crea let you know that adults who want to queuing to learn the abc of plants will be welcome.

The complete programme of the three days is available on the website www.murabilia.com

Murabilia 6- 7-8 September 2019 - Lucca - City Walls

the exhibition is open from Friday from 12:00 to 19:30
Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
the sale of tickets ends at 6.30 p.m. on each day.

Tickets:
- Whole € 8,00
- Reduced € 6,00 over 65, minors between 8 and 14 years old.
- Free for children under 8 years old

- Persons with disabilities free entrance and accompanying persons pay reduced price € 6,00

- Subscription for two days € 14,00
- Subscription for three days € 21,00
- Cumulative purchase 20 admissions € 160,00 plus two free tickets

info - Secretariat of Murabilia
tel. +39 366 1210955 - murabilia@murabilia.com
Monday to Friday from 9.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

(foto pixabay e R. Giomi)