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Casino Barolo (now “Giardino Marisa Bellisario”) is a new green area built around the XVIII century farmhouse from which it takes its name, in the northern outskirts of Turin – an area featuring a thriving residential and commercial development.

Opened in 2009, and winner of the “Città per il verde dell’anno” (“City for Green” of the year) award, it covers some 12 acres and includes cycle paths, fitness trails, playgrounds for children, and other useful services. It has always been is a predominantly agricultural area, but it also features with some industrial settlements that required some land reclamation.
Such intervention, carried out by Marco Minari, Paolo Mighetto and Stefano Fioravanzo (with the help of Ferruccio Capitani and Alessandra Aires – from Turin), involved the local residents, starting with the children of the local primary school, and connected the old farmhouse, the old industrial buildings and some large residential buildings.

The result was a very articulated project that now offers different opportunities such as vegetable gardens, assigned to the neighbours (especially to low-income people), great use of colours to prominently mark the pedestrian and cycle paths, several peculiar benches such as the large sofas made of concrete, and lighting fixtures with unusual and quite odd shapes.

90 trees, 1.000 ground covering plants and 10.000 shrubs were also planted, including Phyllostachis aurea and Populus nigra to connect the different areas and camouflage part of the old buildings and the walls. Ornamental grasses (Carex morrowi, Imperata cylindrical, Miscanthus sinensis) form the parterre at the entrance, with hedges of Abelia grandiflora, Mahonia acquifolium and Nandina domestica.

Small hills and trunks are covered with Juniperus sabina “Tamaricifolia”, Juniperus x pfitzeriana, Juniperus procumbens, while the steeper slopes are covered with Cotoneaster dammeri.
The central garden, a sloping parterre, is made of strips of shrubs of different heights, including Hibiscus syriacus, Ligustrum ovalifolium, Osmanthus, Prunus laurocerasus, Spiraea japonica, Syringa vulgaris, and Viburnum tinus.

Along the avenues, there are some ornamental trees such as Cercidiphyllum japonicum, Davidia involucrata, Gleditsia triacanthos, Populus tremula, Clerodendron trichotomum, Liriodendron tulipifera, Morus nigra, and Pyrus calleriana.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)