The new Tillandsia Gallery

In the main corridor of our hotel - which until now had housed the moodboard of Senato Hotel Milano - a new permanent installation has appeared: the new TILLANDSIA GALLERY.

In a new structure of multicoloured glass and mirrors, we have installed a collection of extraordinary plants called Tillandsias. A genus of aerial Bromeliaceae, which therefore does not require soil to live.

We present here the new creative collaboration that has create a collection of more than twenty different types of this genus of over 600 species -present all over the planet- and exhibited and catalogued them as in a natural history museum.

The duo in charge of this new space, and who renovated all the green areas of the hotel, is composed of Fabio Bonanomi -inspired gardener and arbiter- and Roberto Benatti -garden designer and researcher of green poetics.

Roberto, can you tell us about your career path?

(RB) I started at a school for forestry experts in Tuscany and there I fell in love with greenery. Then I spent a long period of 30 years as a gardener. In the end I was so passionate about design that I focused only on this aspect, with several masters and personal study. 

Fabio, what about yours?

(FB) I am still quite 'fresh', because I started this job 12 years ago. I studied as a gardener, then as an arborist and finally as a tree-climber. But it is thanks to the combination of these disciplines that I specialised in creating gardens.

How did you meet? 

(RB) Thanks to a mutual friend who is also a gardener, he thought we should meet because he recognised possible synergies in us and so we started our journey. 

(FB) As I progressed professionally, I felt the need for someone to design green spaces, because I also love to take care of the executive part, but I lacked that quid to improve my approach to greenery, I needed someone who was a master of these skills, which I recognised in Roberto!

And together you are treating Senato Hotel Milano as if it were your own child? 
 
(FB) Exactly! I have followed the growth of this garden from its beginnings. The project has evolved into a gradual realisation, in several steps, based on observation. And having followed it from the beginning, I feel it almost as if it were my home garden. Emotionally, it is also mine. 

And the last evolutionary step, the one in which Roberto was involved, was really the most important because it gave the push that was needed to make it go from beautiful to magnificent.

Now not only you look after the garden, but almost all of the green spaces at Senato Hotel Milano...

(RB) Yes, practically almost all of them, at least the outdoor ones! The façade, for example, which was one of our first interventions, was a complicated challenge to overcome because the idea was to turn the "beauty" of the balcony towards the rooms as well.
So to have not only a façade furnished with greenery, but also a room.

We succeeded by studying the exposure of light on the façade, following the evolution from the lower to the upper floors. And since the results were so satisfying, we reproduced the same movement in the 'secret' garden of Senato Caffè, a place that practically stunned and fascinated me from the first time I saw it, with its golden door, lawn and creepers.

And it was from your input that we created the new TILLANDSIA GALLERY. How did this idea come about?  

(RB) From the request to give a new reading to the corridor leading from the Hall to the Senato Café. We thought about it for a long time. I liked the idea of inserting plants that were not grounded, and then I found that the key could be precisely to strike the attention of those passing along that corridor, to make them pause and immerse themselves in the feeling that there really is green in the Senato. Green is in the life of the hotel. So much so that we went in search of Tillandsias to emphasise this aspect, in a kaleidoscopic play where it almost seems as if we are in a 19th-century setting. A wonder for the eyes, but also for the soul.

(FB) And also from a practical point of view, that corridor needed something impressive but also simple, and so conceptual and pragmatic aspects came together. Tillandsias, then, are extraordinary plants. There is a huge variety of over 600 species and we have collected the twenty most expressive ones.
 

These air plants are extraordinary. Aesthetically they seem to be from another planet.

(FB) They have the very characteristic of being able to survive without any special requirements. In Forrest Gump, for example, they are seen in the scene where the main character arrives at his mother's colonial house and around him Tillandsias fall from the trees with the simple movement of the wind. This is because they can stay very well in places that might seem inhospitable on the surface, like this area of the hotel.

(RB) They are amazing beings, as are all living things on this planet. And it is this planet that amazes us every day. Which reminds us that we have to preserve it and we have to enjoy it even in its most striking aspects, like plants that live without having land, completely alien to our normal thinking as plants.
 

Since you have been renovating and landscaping almost every corner of our hotel, would you have a hidden wish for one last intervention?

(RB) A wish, not even too hidden, since it is one of the corners of Senato Hotel Milano I saw first, would be to do something for the Rooftop. And although today it is already a complete space, it could become an exceptional place.

(FB) I agree! We are enthusiastic about the design and care we take in maintaining the various green corners of Senato. The plants that we have selected live exceptionally well in this environment and this is something that cannot be taken for granted. The Rooftop could be a new 'Hidden Garden' like the one in Senato Caffè. It would be fascinating to have another Senato space to play with, in the same spirit.