Il Bagolaro di Villa Ghirlanda

Ercole Silva wrote the book on English-style gardens in Italy, literally: his 1801 treatise Dell'arte dei giardini inglesi helped introduce the naturalistic parkland look to the country, and he tried the ideas first on his own land at Cinisello Balsamo, just north of Milan. This hackberry, its trunk 4.45 metres round and its crown 34 metres up, still stands in that garden. The comune calls it bagolaro centenario, over a hundred years old, without giving a firmer figure, and marks it on the villa's own sensory-map trail as one of the garden's defining features alongside its obelisk. Celtis australis is native across the Mediterranean, and Milan knows the species as spaccasassi, the stone-splitter, for roots that push up paving stone; this one has had a century or more to test that reputation against the villa's own paths. Villa Ghirlanda Silva's park is free and open daily, a fifteen-minute tram ride from central Milan rather than a walk: take the M5 metro to Bicocca, then tram 31 to the stop at the villa's own gate.