Italy is a country that builds bridges to the future without burning those to the past and Puglia Paradise demonstrates that capacity in its support to restore two olive groves near Alberobello.

The traditional groves form part of one of Puglia Paradise’s holiday villas, such as Villa Solivetta.

Villa Solivetta is in the center of Puglia, by fare Italy’s most important olive oil producing region and though largely abandoned some years ago they have a bright future ahead of them.

Italy’s olive oil is world renowned and research increasingly shows that olives and olive oil are good for us; the market for high quality Apulian olive oil is growing.

With such a backdrop it makes sense to restore olive groves but in Puglia Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterial plant pathogen, adds an extra challenge to such an initiative. The disease is not currently a problem around Alberobello but in recent years it has killed 21 million olive trees in the Salento area of Puglia with an enormous impact on the area’s economy and traditional landscape. Things are getting better, though, with work that has developed methods to combat the disease and research to develop new cultivars of olive trees that are resistant to the disease.

The bridge to the future in the project Puglia Paradise supports is its selection of a cultivar of olive tree known as “Lecciana” which, in collaboration with number of international bodies, has been bred at Bari University and is resistant to Xylella. Securing those bridges to the past, the project uses traditional practices to ensure the renewed olive groves fit harmoniously in to the centuries-old landscape that folk from the world over choose as a backdrop to their holidays in Italy. They will also protect Italy’s number one spot for biodiversity in Europe and, in particular, the impressive colony of terrestrial orchids that currently testify to the land’s unpolluted status.