Eva Giuliana Mameli Calvino

Mother of Italian writer Italo Calvino, Eva Calvino gave a significant contribution to botanical and agronomic research and to the development of floriculture, in Liguria and beyond. The first woman in Italy to obtain a Botany lecturing post, following her pioneering experiences carried out on the Island of Cuba with her husband Mario, Eva Calvino ran the experimental garden of Ventimiglia and then, between 1926 and 1928, taught Botany at the University of Cagliari, where she was also Head of the Botanical Garden. Eva Calvino and Beatrice Duval founded one of the first associations for the protection of birds useful to agriculture; she is also the author of an illustrated children’s book promoting the introduction in gardens of plants and nesting places suitable for the avifauna. She curated a new edition of J. Bretland Farmer’s Plant Life, but her great merit was the spreading of scientific knowledge amongst gardeners, flower gardeners, and gardening enthusiasts with the magazine “Il giardino fiorito” which she founded in 1931.

Look at the card of the Botanical Garden of Cagliari.