Dalla conservazione alla gestione programmata. Quali specificità per parchi e giardini storici?

Historic gardens represent a widespread heritage in Italy, a cultural heritage, place of everyday life, due to the public nature of most of them. They are often treated like common green areas, considered as recreational spaces without their own specificity and subject to maintenance that does not respect their intrinsic value and characteristics. Their conservation is entrusted, like as for any public work, to the Maintenance Plan which attempts a timely planning of the actions necessary to maintain it, also including preventive control and monitoring actions. However, this tool has proven, in practice, to be largely fallacious due to a lack of both economic and human resources, of skills and of long-term planning. Conservation planning requires, especially for "ordinary" historic gardens, to combine human and economic resources with the actions. At the same time, it requires management strategies related to cultural initiatives and participation and education activities that arise from a process of sharing choices between experts, public administrators, citizens' associations. The Management Plan for historic gardens finds a fundamental reference in the English experience: it is the right tool to guarantee the conservation of cultural heritage by linking maintenance planning to human and economic resources. The contribution intends to also highlight some recent experiences of Management Plans in the Italian experience by reflecting on the aspects that affect the effective implementation of this tool specifically for the Italian country.