Founder

Before the gardens came industrial pumps, refineries in Iraq, oil tankers in the Gulf of Lion. Andrea Giovannetti began his career at Cerpelli Pompe in Querceta, in a testing and commissioning room where nothing could be left to chance: those machines were destined for oil refineries, installations along the Chilean coast, and naval systems where a breakdown is not merely a technical issue but can bring entire production facilities to a standstill.

It was there that Andrea learnt to read water — to understand how it behaves under pressure, what one sees if one knows where to look, because the context in which a system will operate is always the first thing to study, even before choosing the technical solution. That mindset has never left his way of working. Even today, when he enters a garden, the first thing he studies is not the canopy of the trees: it is the subsoil.

His travels to Iraq—to Baghdad, Baiji and Basra—and then to Bulgaria and Chile, rounded off his training in an unexpected way: Andrea discovered that the most enduring knowledge is almost always that which sinks in quietly, accumulated in extreme contexts, far from greenery but very close to an understanding of how complex systems work. “When I talk today about aquifers, soil salinity, iron in the water or irrigation management, I am bringing together everything I saw in those places.”

On 30 April 2016, Cerpelli Pompe closed. Andrea had already been immersed for years in Giardinarte — a company he had built up slowly, one satisfied customer at a time, quietly and without artificial acceleration. Like a plant that spends years building its roots underground and which, only when the time is right, finally begins to develop in all its visible strength.

“True expertise does not come solely from study: it comes from presence, from having truly been in those places. The most lasting knowledge is that which enters within without making a sound.” — Andrea Giovannetti

Michela officially joined the company in 2015, formalising a role she had in practice held for a long time. She is the one who holds the threads of a growing company together: administrative management, customer relations, and the operational continuity that allows Andrea, Luca and Lorenzo to work in the field knowing that everything else is running smoothly.

In a sector where attention tends to focus on the visibility of the physical work — the site, the plants, the pruning — Michela’s quiet and precise presence is what transforms Giardinarte from a one-man business into a proper organisation. Things done well stand the test of time: even those that nobody sees.

Luca grew up in Forte dei Marmi surrounded by greenery — but his training wasn’t in landscaping: it was in luxury hospitality and art. Years of working in high-end hospitality, culminating at the Datcha Collection, taught him something that twenty years of artisanal craftsmanship could hardly convey: how to build a system where everyone knows their role without waiting for someone to remind them. How to make a customer feel not like a number, but like a person who is truly cared for.

But there is another aspect of Luca that comes with him into the company: his eye. Years of artistic practice, studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, a passion for drawing — geometric flowers, plant forms reinterpreted in a contemporary style, compositions where precision and fluidity interact rather than compete. Growing up in Pietrasanta, just a few kilometres from one of the world’s sculpture capitals, has instilled in him something that cannot be taught: the aesthetic sensibility of someone who has always lived surrounded by the conscious transformation of matter.

When Luca designs a flowerbed, he doesn’t think of it solely in botanical terms. He thinks of it in terms of space: how this shape relates to that one, where this colour draws the eye, how this volume constructs the landscape. It is a skill that makes a huge difference in prestigious gardens — and one that Giardinarte lacked until Luca joined the company in December 2024.

“Giardinarte carries the idea of art in its name, and today, with Luca on board, that name has taken on an extra dimension.” — Andrea Giovannetti

Lorenzo took a path that seemed far removed from the green world: top-level roller hockey, with Amatori Wasken Lodi in Serie A. But he turned that path into a school of life that no corporate training course could have given him. He knows what it means to be a team when the stakes are high. He knows how to keep people together in difficult times. He knows how to motivate someone without manipulating them, how to correct without tearing them down.

He coaches young people in the youth teams — a role that requires a particular sensitivity: the ability to understand people at a stage in life when they are both fragile and invincible. Lorenzo has developed that ability, and he brings it with him every time he works with Giardinarte’s staff. In a sector where team —on site, in client relations, in managing emergencies—his presence changes the atmosphere.

He also views the local area with a different perspective to those who have always stayed put: living in Lodi for years has given him that outside perspective that allows him to look at his own reality with fresh eyes, to see what those who have never moved on cannot see.