Among the best Lake Maggiore day trips to undertake in spring, you cannot miss Villa Taranto Botanical Gardens, a riot of colors and lights! Let’s discover something more on their history and how they surprise visitors in every season. Villa Taranto and the intuition of a Scottish Captain The Botanical Gardens consist of a 16 hectares park directly on the western shore of Lake Maggiore, in Pallanza, Verbania. They were born from the botanical passion of Captain Neil McEacharn who bought the land in 1931 from the Marchioness of Sant'Elia to transform it into an extraordinary botanical garden. Born in the south of Scotland in 1884, McEacharn came from a Scottish wealthy noble family, which allowed him to devote himself full time to the great passions of his life: botany, gardening and travel. He managed to travel around the world several times to witness and study different plant species and varieties. It was in 1931, on his return home after a long stay in Venice, that Neil McEacharn read an advertisement in the Times about the sale of a villa in Pallanza on the Castagnola hill. Despite the abandoned condition of the villa, the Captain decided to buy it to fulfill his life-longing dream of transforming the park into a beautiful botanical garden with a rich collection of plants from all over the world. Trusting in the beauty of the place, in the mildness of the climate and in the incredible work of terracing and excavation, the Captain was able to combine aesthetic and botanical needs. He bought other adjacent lands and in the 16 hectares of the property he created woods, borders and valleys of shrubs, flowerbeds, parterres, lawns, ponds, greenhouses and planted plants from all over the world, forming collections of great scientific value that now count 8,500
Among the best Lake Maggiore day trips to undertake in spring, you cannot miss Villa Taranto Botanical Gardens, a riot of colors and lights! Let’s
