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La Pietra Rossa is actually the private garden of Maurizio Usai, a young landscape architect; this garden is in Solanas (province of Cagliari).

This facility was born as an experimental garden, to test the adaptability of many botanical species and new cultivation and plant arrangement techniques. It currently covers an area of about 478 square yards, hosting more than 1.000 different species and it is divided into several themed “rooms”. The Mediterranean matrix is merged with the British one, featuring surprising results in the use of colour and the alternation of interesting elements throughout the year; painstaking maintenance is the key factor to the overall success of this garden, which is also a virtuous example of environmental sustainability.

PLANTS

The rose garden section houses 130 varieties chosen according to their particular beauty and fragrance and belonging to ancient and English origins; the Mediterranean garden which features shades of white and blue stands next to a small sunken one, while there is also a specific arrangement of plants inside some tubs and a vegetable garden.

Each “room” has its own predominant colour combination thanks to the different blooms, such as the entrance to the garden, which ranges from pink to purple.
There are also some trees of remarkable interest, such as an old pine (in the rose garden), and a large cork oak (Quercus suber), with a small rock garden at its foot, created for orchids, cyclamen and other small bulbs of the Mediterranean scrub.

Decorations have been made with the local red stone (leucocratic granite), which also gives its name to the garden itself.

Thanks to the strong wind, often blowing in this part of Sardinia, mastic trees (Pistacia lentiscus), junipers (Juniperus communis), myrtles (Myrtus communis), and privets (Ligustrum lucidum) have been skilfully modelled to obtain soft and undulating shapes.