Historic gardens restoration – preliminary outcomes from a synergistic application of visual assessment and geomatic techniques to optimize the management of arboreal heritages

Italian historic gardens represent a relevant asset for the tangible and intangible landscape. Along with architectural and artistic heritage they also have financial relevance, promoting several types of tourism and providing ecosystem services. The huge amount of resources needed to maintain them caused some to be partly or fully untended for many years. In order to preserve the identity of historic gardens, restoration plans must therefore consider anthropic and natural processes influencing the evolution of the different components. Through the integration of census, visual assessment and traditional topographic survey of the trees, supported by GNSS (global navigation satellite system) techniques, a procedure to collect and analyse data are under development. The work aims to optimize environmental and financial sustainability of the future restoration process. This paper presents the preliminary outcomes from the first trial occurred into the historic garden of Villa Sorra in Castelfranco Emilia (MO, Italy). The digital mapping of the trees was key to determine direct spatial relationships by using GIS (geographical information system) tools. Preliminary data processing mainly allowed the visualization and quantification of the urgencies related to the management of the trees suffering from serious health conditions. Overall, the interdisciplinary approach proved to be fundamental for multilevel planning and improved the efficiency if compared to the traditional assessment methodology.