Historic Gardens as Neglected Heritage in a Rural Mediterranean Region (Basilicata, Italy): Multi-Source Assessments for Emerging Categories Across Landscape Units

Historic gardens represent an important part of the cultural heritage of a region. Gardens in rural areas, lacking some formal features and having characteristics strictly combined with the landscape, are often neglected. This contribution aims to give a methodological assessment for their recognition and an evaluation of the resulting categories. We analysed the Basilicata region (Italy), which shows a rural economy and low urbanisation. Previous knowledge recorded only few historic gardens, but considering various sources of information, based on the convergence of botanical, historical-artistic, and social significance, we obtained a preliminary inventory of 335 sites, later reduced to 150. Eight socio-cultural categories emerged, with a predominance of Masserie gardens, which align landscape design with productive function, followed by noble urban palaces’ gardens, where design is predominantly ornamental, and by gardens of religious complexes and cloisters. Memorial and cemetery’s gardens, and those of castles, rural villas, public and archaeological sites, and agronomic horti channel panoramic and topographic settings into ornamental or community values. Their territorial distribution varies across the nine landscape units of the region, with the most interesting ones in the Murgia Materan Plateau and in the Coastal Ionic Plain, with an inverse trend between quantity and quality. The study defines their typological and structural characteristics and brings to light a significant number of neglected realities. Most of them date back to the Middle Age and the modern era, even if heavily changed, having a horticultural function together with aesthetic and spiritual values.