This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

This garden can be found along the river, next to the historical city centre of Bormio, between the mountains and the urban area. Antonio Citterio & Partners designed the latter, eventually creating four tall and quite slim buildings, covered with grey larch panels and connected by staircases and glass catwalks. Inside these building, the very same simple and extremely elegant style is blended with modern features which can still offer the traditional warmth and cosiness of a mountain resort.

The surrounding garden was designed by landscape architect Sophie Agata Ambroise, who homogeneously blended the typical alpine botanical garden with a river park, thus offering both spontaneous and cultivated green patches of sheer emotion.

THE PROJECT

The garden surrounds the hotel on some 6.000 square yards; the riverside, facing the town, is a park-like creation protected from the water by a wall of local rocks. It features typical autochthonous flora, with silver or grey-greenish foliage. There are birches, poplars, alders and a collection of arboreal and shrubby willows. Then there are alpine fescues (Sedum, and Sempervivum) everywhere, while the soil is covered by light gravel. The latter offers protection against water evaporation in the summer, as well as harsh winter temperatures which could freeze and damage the plant roots. It also keeps weeds at bay and welcomes the falling seeds which can then reproduce with spontaneous randomness.

On this same side, near the entrance and the hotel rooms, lawns alternate with small fruit and flower gardens, delimited by natural chestnut poles, peeled and split by hand following the ribs of the wood.

Inside, there are several fluffy turf carpets, surrounded by raspberry bushes, currant and berries (Rosa rugosa “Hansa”, Rosa canina “Kiese”, Rosa gallica versicolor), mixed with spring and summer flowers: liliums, Papaver nudicaule, coneflowers, aster amellus, Erigeron caucasicum, and Eryngium montanum.

The same gardens are found along the backside of the hotel, facing the pastures and the mountains, but their style is more intimate with a slightly different choice of plants, including raspberries, currant, mountain ashes, wild strawberries, honeysuckles, leather flowers, a collection of lilac (Syringa spp.), Amelanchier lamarckii, and some other species which prefer the shade like Geranium spp., lupines, columbines, and bellflowers.

Even if you’re not a hotel guest, you can visit the garden enjoying the dishes offered by the Eden Hotel restaurant, where Chef Antonio Borruso blends seasonal ingredients, local products and southern delicacies, harmoniously playing between tradition and innovation.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)