Mario Margheriti, famous farmer, dreamer and passionate botanist, is pushed today, as in the beginning of his career, by a deep love for nature, a great curiosity and a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
Born in Chiusi, Tuscany, 67 years ago, he worked with his parents in a company that used to sale seeds and bulbs, until, at the age 25, he began his own floricultural activity.
In 1978, he moved to Lazio, Ardea (Rome), where he opened up an area of ​​3,000 square meters, the Torsanlorenzo Garden Centers. Since the beginning, he started looking for all the plants he didn’t know anything about yet, traveling, studying on foreign books and gardens catalogs, dealing with landscape architects, botanists and other enthusiasts with whom he eventually began to work: people like Lavinia Taverna, Russell Page, Joan Tesei, that together helped during the years at developing and disseminating the culture of green in Italy and abroad.
The base of the production is represented by the native Mediterranean plants, but the favorable climate of the Pontine region, has allowed him to work in forty years, through a passionate, expensive and risky process of research and experimentation, to introduce a vast number of unknown plants, some of which have become the protagonists of many Mediterranean gardens around the world.
These include plants from Australia, New Zealand, but also South African, South American ones that were then still unknown to the national and European markets, a rich collection that has expanded the range of botanical heritage cultivated in garden centers.
In recent years, Mario Margheriti opened other garden centers, until he got to the present 17 companies, located in different climatic regions, from the Agro Pontino, to Sicily, France, and South Africa.
In 2006, he brought the companies together in the current Torsanlorenzo Gruppo Florovivaistico: a total of 650 hectares of cultivated area, of which 29 hectares of air-conditioned greenhouses, with a catalog of 5,700 species and varieties, palms, trees and much more, with a very high quality of production , ranging from small plants to remarkable specimens, for landscapers, farmers, botanical gardens, garden centers, big distribution, urban green, wholesalers and private workers, in Italy and abroad.
New challenges for the future are the opening of a company in Batumi (Georgia) and an office in Azerbaijan, this because I strongly believe in the internationalization and this is testified by the success of a company that, despite the inevitably suffered great period of crisis, reacted in contrast diversifying production and opening up to the search for new markets.