This ancient Tuscan borgo and its 5 hectares were transformed by myself and a Danish couple with the aim of opening a 5-star hotel. The hotel's kitchen would need organic, freshly-grown vegetables and herbs so we quickly had those set up and running.
However, given that there was a drastic water shortage, areas of fine lawn would have to be kept to a minimum and this is where my expertise came in useful. In one season we had created 4 hectares of wild flower garden, using the ecologica garden system. This saved around 80% of both water and maintenance, allowing for the gardeners to concentrate their efforts on the finer details of the garden's maintenence and not just on the cutting and watering of the fine English lawns.
In this series of photographs you will note a variety of indigenous Italian wild flower species that appeared, almost by magic after just one ecologica treatment. No seed was used, no irrigation and certainly no fertiliser was needed in the creation of these wild flower areas. One wild flower area was planted with thousands of naturalising daffodils, other flowering bulbs and iris and became an absolute spectacle in spring and early summer