Giardini Winter

In 1875, German botanist Ludwig Winter laid out a garden nursery of palms between Bordighera's old fishing shore and the Sasso valley. After decades of abandonment, the gardens were restored and reopened in 2015, displaying exotic vegetation associated with the town's botanical history.

Why it matters

Bordighera's reputation as the Riviera's botanical capital has one founding name on it, and these are his gardens. Ludwig Winter, the German landscape botanist who had helped create the Hanbury Gardens at Ventimiglia, chose in 1875 to settle in Bordighera and built a garden-nursery of several thousand square metres in the hollow between the Arziglia, the town's old fishermen's beach, and the Vallone del Sasso, arranging it around an existing palmetto on terraces held by dry-stone walls. From this nursery, where he acclimatised, multiplied and sold exotic plants, Bordighera's international botanical fame grew: the official portal credits him with turning the town, from 1875, into an important international botanical centre. After decades of abandonment, the gardens were restored and reopened in 2015, returning a representative place in the town's landscape history.

What to notice

More than sixty varieties of palms grow here alongside agaves, ficus and other species. The original collection includes Phoenix dactylifera, Phoenix canariensis, Phoenix reclinata, Chilean Jubaea chilensis and Livistona australis. Winter was known for acclimatisation, propagation and transplanting mature specimens; the gardens retain monumental trunks and crowns.

Dry-stone walls terrace the slope between the shore and the vallon. Dense, layered vegetation preserves the character of a landscape garden and reflects Bordighera's botanical history. Via Ludovico Winter, named for the botanist, borders the site.

Context and history

Winter arrived with credentials: collaboration on the Hanbury estate had already tested his methods in Ligurian conditions. In Bordighera he built not just a garden but an industry of plants — the nursery supplied palms and exotics to clients along the coast, a shop in town sold flowers and seedlings, and his promotion of floriculture fed the perfume trade that shipped local mimosa and violets as far as Grasse. Scholars, travellers and botanists visited the gardens as a station of Mediterranean science.

Decline came in the twentieth century, and the site entered a long period of abandonment. Restoration returned the terraces and palm collection to the town's public life. The gardens are protected by Liguria's architectural and landscape superintendency.