Porto Caleri Coastal Botanical Garden Site Features

The dune sequence

Beach, foredune, fixed dune and slack in order, each with its own vegetation. The point of the whole place.

The woodland

Pine and holm oak behind the dunes, cool and dense, and a complete contrast to the open sand a hundred metres away.

The lagoon edge

The far end of the walk reaches the brackish water behind the dune belt, with its own salt-tolerant plants and its birds.

The boardwalks

Raised walkways keep visitors off the dunes, which is why the dunes are still here.

The garden occupies a strip of coast at the northern end of the delta, between the open Adriatic and the lagoon behind Rosolina.

Its whole subject is the gradient across that strip: salt, wind and shifting sand at the beach, giving way over a few hundred metres to sheltered, stable, shaded ground in the wood, with a completely different plant community at each stage.

The ground is entirely flat and barely above sea level, and the dune ridges -- a couple of metres high -- are the only relief for many kilometres.

Behind the lagoon the land is reclaimed farmland, most of it below sea level.