Gardeners Cernobbio
Gardenersin Cernobbio.
Terraces, citrus, and gardens that predate the road.
Lake Como Province of Como
The trade base here is the deepest on the lake, and it is a function of the city rather than the town: architects, surveyors, structural engineers, restorers and the notarial and legal professions are all in Como, minutes away, and they are used to working on protected buildings. Anyone renovating in Cernobbio has a shorter list of problems than someone renovating at mid-lake for this reason alone.
The complication is regulatory rather than practical. Much of the waterfront is subject to landscape and heritage constraint, several of the villas are individually listed, and works close to the water bring in a further set of consents. None of it is unusual for this lake; all of it takes longer than a first programme assumes, and the right answer is to have the constraints established before you exchange rather than after.
For how this trade works across the whole lake, what to ask for, how the firms are chosen and what goes wrong, read gardeners on Lake Como. For the village itself, read our guide to Cernobbio.
Editorial note: we have not yet written up how this trade works in Cernobbio specifically, so this page is kept out of search until we have. The introduction itself is unaffected. Ask and we will make it.
On the network
8 teams
Held across the lake rather than in one village. We introduce the two we would use ourselves for the job in front of you.
01What they do
The terraces and their walls
Walking the dry-stone retaining walls after the winter, keeping the drainage above them open, and calling in a mason before a bulge becomes a collapse.
Citrus, camellias and the overwintering
Feeding on acid soils, moving potted citrus into the limonaia before the cold and back out in spring, and the pruning cycles the old plantings expect.
Irrigation
Zoning, filtration where the supply is drawn from the lake, and a full walk of the system in early summer rather than a call in August.
Trees and the shoreline edge
Pollarding on the inherited cycle, taking down what the storms have loosened above the house, and keeping the lake boundary and jetty planting in order.
Questions
How often does a Lake Como garden need attention?
Through the whole year, with the heaviest work in late winter and early spring and a steady weekly presence from April to October.
The winter visits are the ones owners are tempted to cut and the ones that matter most: walls, drainage, pruning and the overwintering of pots. A garden maintained only in season looks acceptable for two or three years and then starts losing structure, at which point recovering it is a building job as much as a gardening one.
How is garden maintenance charged on Lake Como?
Normally as an annual contract covering an agreed number of visits with a defined scope, with major works, tree surgery and replanting quoted separately. We do not publish rates.
What moves the figure is the area, how much of it is terraced, whether there is irrigation to run, how many pots have to be moved twice a year, and whether the team is also responsible for the boundary above the house. Ask what the contract excludes, and in particular whether waste removal is inside it, because on a site with no vehicle access that is not a trivial cost.
What grows well on Lake Como?
The lake keeps winters mild at the shore, which supports camellias and azaleas on the acid soils, oleander, magnolia, wisteria, olives on the drier terraces and citrus kept in pots under cover for the coldest months.
Altitude changes the answer quickly. A hundred metres above the water is a different climate, and gardens on the shaded eastern flanks behave differently again from south-facing terraces. Any planting plan that ignores where on the hillside it sits will disappoint in its second winter.
Written by The Como Private Desk
Elsewhere in Cernobbio
Gardeners in other villages
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward