Milan: the Design City
April 3, 2025
Orticola Exhibition 2025
Love for greenery, but also desire to ensure healthy growth and a healthy life for the creatures that live among us, and indeed: “Bio, bio, bio: there is life in the garden”, this is the theme of Orticola 2025, the Exhibition Market dedicated to sustainable gardening, which returns this year from 8th to 11th May at the Indro Montanelli Gardens.
Exchanging news and notions about flowers, plants and natural beauty: these were the aims of Count Francesco Pertusati and a group of his friends, that in 1854 gave birth to the Orticola association. Based on the model of the Société d’Horticulture de France, today, after more than 160 years, the association is still one of the first Italian institutions to promote the knowledge of plants, garden art and the spontaneous plant landscape.
Since 1996, a committee within the association has been responsible for organising the ‘Orticola’ market exhibition in the public gardens of Via Palestro in May, under the patronage of the Municipality of Milan, with the aim of publicising excellent horticultural production and raising funds for the city’s green spaces.
“For too long we have been going in the direction of simplification, but today it is necessary to encourage biodiversity, even on a balcony pot. Finding a balance with the environment must and can be done. It is time to emphasise the value of life, looking at the garden and the terrace as places where we can relate to Nature in all its forms, not just on an aesthetic basis,’ said architect Filippo Pizzoni, vice-president of the Orticola di Lombardia association. Not only plants: every green space will be able to host birds, hedgehogs, insects and micro-organisms, this is why the advertising sign for the 2025 event illustrates a sprout and an earthworm peeping out of an organic soil, while the image chosen to represent the theme is a composition of perennials with Centaurea cineraria and Oenothera odorata.
Centaurea cineraria e Oenothera odorata – Aldo Castoldi/Orticola di Lombardia
Bio, bio, bio: there is life in the garden
Bio, bio, bio, repeated three times, to remind us that there is life wherever a healthy plant grows, and to embrace with each ‘bio’ the diversity of nature and the ways in which humans relate to it.
Bio as biodiversity
The first ‘bio’ alludes to biodiversity and its importance. If we imagine the garden or terrace as a miniature ecosystem, biodiversity is what makes this small world vibrant and resilient. When we host a range of plants, a natural balance is created. Bees and butterflies, attracted by the variety, take care of pollination. Natural predators, such as ladybirds and spiders, keep pests under control. The different plants enrich the soil and nourish the microbiome, improving the soil structure and creating a fertile substrate. In this way, the garden becomes more resistant to disease and climate change. A biodiverse environment also gives support and shelter to wildlife, making every green thumb a guardian of the Planet. The 150 exhibitors at Orticola will offer visitors a great showcase of biodiversity with ancient varieties, unusual plants and new hybrids resistant to climate change.
Bio as organic cultivations
The second ‘bio’ refers to organic cultivation methods. The adoption of practices such as composting, recycling, valorisation of organic material, crop rotation and the use of fertilisers of natural origin, favours the creation of a balanced ecosystem where plants grow resistant to disease.
Bio as bio-energy
Bio also means bio-energy: the energy put into circulation by a passion for nature and plants, which results in multiple cultural exchanges and constructive connections. Raising citizens’ awareness of the culture of greenery is one of the main aims of Orticola di Lombardia, which has always collaborated with the City of Milan. Among the injections of bio-energy and sap for the city, will be the many initiatives planned for FuoriOrticola, the city widespread exhibition.
FuoriOrticola 2025
Along the return of the Mostra Mercato Orticola, the FuoriOrticola circuit is also back, now in its 7th edition, which will ‘bloom’ in the windows, museums, villas, castles and gardens of Milan and beyond. Open to the public from 29th April to 18th May, there will be various events in the most charismatic places of Milanese culture and city shopping.
From the Civic Archaeological Museum to the Aquarium and the Civic Hydrobiological Station, passing through the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, this year there are several new partners joining the initiative and adding to those that have been consolidated for years, such as the Castello Sforzesco, Museo del Novecento, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Mudec, Brera Botanical Garden, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Risorgimento Museum, Gallerie d’Italia and many others.
Of these, several are involved in the organisation of ad hoc events for FuoriOrticola, such as the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum with the exhibition entitled ‘From Then to Now’ by Jamaican artist Hugh Findletar, who creates a series of vases set up with plants and flowers in a pathway that includes several rooms of the Museum and symbolically closes FuoriOrticola with the finissage on Sunday 18th May.
FuoriOrticola is also about making the city bloom, and Milan is blooming in beauty thanks to the floral displays of the Vetrine Fiorite initiative, with the fundamental collaboration and patronage of Confcommercio Milano – Imprese per l’Italia – Milano Lodi Monza e Brianza and the renewed participation of ‘Club Imprese Storiche’, which brings with it the membership of some of the city’s oldest places, some of which are even a hundred years old. This year’s initiative is made even more symbiotic with culture and close to the city, through the floral designers’ setting up of the shop windows, inspired by the works of art in the city’s museums.
Orticola and FuoriOrticola, promises to be a breath of fresh air for Milan, a city too often associated only with smog and fine dust. An event that will embrace the entire city, highlighting its green and eco-sustainable initiatives, which are often undervalued, and an invitation to remind not only citizens, but also to all visitors, that nature, flowers and plants are fundamental elements for our wellbeing and must therefore be cared for and preserved.
With FuoriOrticola, moreover, tourists coming to Milan during the month of May will be able to see, among the crowded shopping streets, the floral displays created in the shop windows and admire in the various museums, numerous exhibitions with the aim of sharing the interest and love for greenery.
Associazione Orticola di Lombardia – www.orticola.org
