Francesco Decembrini collection
Francesco Decembrini was born in Cermes (Bolzano), on 5th December 1950.
Graduated in Agricultural Science at the Faculty of Bologna, with an experimental thesis, he was director of the Municipal Gardens of Merano from 1978 to 2002.
Pragmatic ecologist, great lover of environment, nature and plants that he knew in depth, with his ideas and his inventiveness he had made himself known and appreciated in Italy and abroad becoming in a short time an institution of the world of gardens and landscape.
Between 1990 and 2000 he organized a series of international congresses, including the Giornate Internazionali Meranesi in 1995 and the 3rd European Arboriculture Congress in 1997. He was the creator of Meranflora, the great festival of temporary gardens that animated the public spaces of Merano and directed many editions of Floranaunia; it is his idea of the Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle, whose project he collaborated as creator and promoter.
In 2003 he founded the studio Deverde, working as a freelancer and devoting himself increasingly to the design of gardens, including numerous green areas in the municipalities of Val di Non, theme parks in the Municipality of Cesenatico with the first realization of a rose garden, recovering a landfill, creating scenic equipment and the exterior of the Malatesta Tower.
In 2010 he was admitted to the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show with an alpin garden project, with Daniele Zanzi, which won a prestigious award.
He continues his activity carrying out assignments in the Province of Trento and realizing, in 2011, his most important intuition, The Garden of Rose, one of the most important at the Italian level.
He died in Vasio (Trento) on 4th May 2020.
Contents of the collection
The collection includes about 500 publications, and some issues of magazines, from the library of Francesco Decembrini and mainly related to his professional activity. They are texts of botany (manuals, guides and encyclopedias), floriculture and arboriculture, also oriented to management and maintenance techniques; the themes of roses and trees are prevalent but there are also texts of history and design of garden and landscape, writings about and of famous landscape designers and about the life and environment of Trentino.
Research tools
Library in process of cataloguing, a list of volumes is available.
Accessibility conditions
The collection can be consulted in accordance with the rules of the library/documentation centre.
Method of acquisition
Gift of the Decembrini family, October 2021
