Museum Garden

The Museum Garden is temporarily closed for maintenance work.

The Museum Garden, located in one of the internal courtyards of the Charterhouse, next to the Historical Gallery, is devoted to the plants of Monte Pisano.
It is a multi-sensory space accessible to all, a relaxing place for visitors and a point of reference for the knowledge of the plants of our territory both through free fruition and through guided educational activities.
The garden is currently open to the public, but is still underway and will be completed and inaugurated in May 2025, at the end of the larger project “Requalification of green spaces and restoration of ecosystem services of the Carthusian Monastery of Pisa”, of which it is also part.

The Garden is made up of four flowerbeds and a central pool in which the main natural environments of Monte Pisano have been recreated.

The first flowerbed is dedicated to the garrigue and the Mediterranean scrub on calcareous soil with the main aromatic shrubs that characterize the garrigues of Monte Pisano: the thorny euphorbia, the savory, the Italic helichrysum, the myrtle and the lentisk; and with hawthorn and wild roses, splendid rustic species of scrub. A sector of this flowerbed is exclusively dedicated to the Tyrrhenian iris, an elegant species typical of the garrigue, which flowers in early spring.

The second flowerbed is dedicated, in the sunny part, to the spontaneous lawn including herbaceous species such as field gladiolus, whose spontaneous presence has reduced over the years due to excessive tillage of the land and the use of pesticides; and, in the shaded part, to the undergrowth with plants whose blooms follow one another from the end of winter with the green hellebore until autumn with the cyclamen.

The third flowerbed is dedicated to the Mediterranean scrub on acid soil and includes pyrophytic species (plants adapted to fires) such as rockroses, heathers, wild lavender and citisis.

The fourth flowerbed is dedicated to marginal environments with rustic herbaceous and shrubby species capable of colonizing roadsides and old ruins, such as buckthorn, common broom and viscous inula; and with the arboreal euphorbia, a tertiary thermophilic relic, considered a colonizer of abandoned quarries.

In the central pool, a sphagnum pond is being set up, a humid environment of priority importance for the European community. The environment will be recreated with the species present in the Buti sphagnum pond: the sphagnum mosses, cold Quaternary relict mosses, and the majestic florid fern, the largest fern in Europe, a Tertiary thermophilic relic.

The Garden was created with the scientific consultancy of the Botanical Garden and Museum of the University of Pisa.
We also thank the Botanical Garden and Museum of the University of Pisa for engraving the labels.