This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

Le Paradis des Papillons is the delightful name of a garden not far from Abano Terme, born out of true great passion and competence of its owner, Michele Thomas Calore – a professional gardener, who lives here with his young family.

As he always says, in his interesting blog, “The garden was born slowly in 2004, on a modest strip of clayey land in the Po River valley, planting day after day and conquering meter after meter, filling with stems, leaves, flowers, fruits … it then became, on the one hand, a small personal oasis of peace and spiritual and emotional well-being in an increasingly man-made landscape, and on the other, a lively living laboratory, like a canvas to be painted and repainted in every season with a living matter like the plants. Thus the love for the garden can grow from a single seed and bears its fruits in a happy place full of love that can be like a small world, delimited by a green wall of hedges within which everything is forgotten and rediscovered, in the ancestral contact with nature between small prodigies and great shows of apparent simple rituals”.

The garden runs along a rectangular area of 656 × 98 ft and features a most challenging clayey-loamy soil, and a harsh climate with cold and rainy winters, followed by humid and very hot summers. The long and narrow shape of the garden was divided in several “rooms”, using bending patches of shrubs and perennial plants, arches, pergolas, yew hedges, a grove of hornbeams, lime trees, and a pond. The lawn is a green path which tempts the visitors to explore the garden further and further.

The local climate and the peculiar soil proved of utmost importance when selecting the plants for the garden – they had to be resistant to fungal diseases, inevitably boosted by high humidity.

For instance, many roses were selected among the most resistant, fragrant and re-flowering species. Visitors can thus enjoy the area dedicated to grass varieties, the family of echinaceae, and other perennial plants of the American prairies. Then, there’s the pond, and the romantic gazebo in white wrought iron, covered with “Minerva” and “Moscalbò” roses – those varieties were created by friend and fellow countryman Davide Della Libera, a young and promising breeder.
The blooms follow one another all year round, so there is no particular season to visit this wondrous garden. Its owner has also inserted many courtyard animals, including ornamental hens, geese, ducks and peacocks.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)