Museum Garden

The Museum Garden is located in one of the inner courtyards of the Carthusian Monastery, next to the Museum’s Historical Gallery. It is a Naturalistic Garden dedicated to the main natural environments of Monte Pisano, recreated using only plants and rocks from the local area.

It is maintained with minimal pruning aimed at controlling plant growth; this method allows the plants to complete their biological cycle, producing flowers and fruit, while animals, especially pollinators, always have food available.

It is a space accessible to everyone, a place for relaxation, and a starting point for learning about the natural treasures of our territory.

The first sector is dedicated to marginal environments, such as the edges of roads and paths, ruins, and abandoned quarries. Many marginal environments are nutrient-poor and have limited and/or unstable soil, and can therefore only be colonized by hardy, undemanding pioneer plants, such as European spindle, Mediterranean buckthorn, and Spanish broom. Other marginal environments, however, are rich in nitrates, typically associated with remnants of human activities, and are therefore populated by nitrophilous species, such as nettle, spreading pellitory, and white campion.

The second sector features a central flowerbed that recreates an atypical post-fire Mediterranean shrubland, similar to that which developed in various areas affected by the great fire of September 2018. It is a dense and impenetrable shrubland consisting mainly of heathers and gorse.

The third sector is dedicated to the acidophilic Mediterranean shrubland associated with maritime pine forests, an environment that may also develop following fires in the pine forest. This shrubland is made up of pyrophytes, plants that can resist fire or even benefit from it, such as rock roses, heathers, mastic, and narrow-leaved mock privet. These plants are associated with species such as strawberry tree, lavender, common heather, and eagle fern, which are not strictly pyrophytes, but rather acidophilic, meaning they prefer acidic soils.

The fourth sector is dedicated to the undergrowth. In the shade of the palm, flanked by four specimens of laurustinus, over thirty herbaceous species have been introduced, including some rare species for Monte Pisano, such as wild garlic, snowdrop, snowbell, and Portuguese colchicum, which grow only in a few cool, humid areas on the Lucca side.

The fifth sector is dedicated to the spontaneous meadow and is composed of a heterogeneous and colorful set that changes during the year in a succession of leaves and flowers: clovers and edible basal rosettes of the so-called “erbi boni”; the bright spring blooms of garlic, borage and St. John’s wort; the tall summer blooms of wild fennel and spear thistle, which reach almost two meters in height. Alongside the common species, rarer species have also been included, such as Roman hyacinth, gladiolus, and orchids, which are threatened by deep tillage, herbicides, and frequent mowing.

The sixth sector is dedicated to the garrigue on calcareous soil and its natural progression into shrubland.

The garrigue is a degraded shrubland resulting from fires, intensive grazing, and/or deforestation. It mainly consists of evergreen and aromatic herbaceous and shrubby species, growing sparsely on dry soils with exposed bedrock. It naturally evolves into shrubland, the typical form of vegetation of the Mediterranean region, consisting of an intricate set of shrubs and small trees.

The Garden was created as part of the “Redevelopment of green spaces and restoration of ecosystem services of the Monumental Carthusian Monastery of Pisa” project, and is combined with the publication “I tesori del Monte Pisano”.