Italian young plant pioneer Piero Marino dies at 81

Piero Marino inside the Si-Flor company.

It is with a heavy heart that our correspondent in Italy, Arturo Croci shares the news of the passing of Piero Marino, hailed as a great champion of Italy’s ornamental horticulture industry. He was 81.

The international horticulture industry said goodbye to a truly inspirational figure on 5 October when Piero Marino passed away in the hospital of Conegliano, Italy.

Today, only older green professionals will remember him. Yet, Pietro (Piero) Marino revolutionised the production of young plants in the mid-1970s.

Piero, who took his early education at the Istituto Tecnico Agrario Bonafous, founded his horticultural business, together with his wife Clelia, in Carmagnola (a Piedmontese municipality not far from Turin), in the 1970s. He specialised in the production of peppers and vegetables.

Back then, the production of annuals and vegetables began with the purchase of seeds from suppliers such as Itolanda, and Benary, sowing them in containers, with results that were not always satisfactory due to low germinatio rate of  seeds, and, above all because, to the poor climatic conditions.

Piero’s idea was to sow seeds in a more suited environment, by machine or manually, using plug trays (by convincing a manufacturer of polystyrene containers to produce suitable alveolates) and sell the seedlings to growers who grow them on as finished plants.

Today, this operation is so obvious, so common in all seed and propagation companies around the world, that it may raise eyebrows (just as the sale of cut flowers of chrysanthemums in boxes instead of wicker baskets or the transport of flowers by truck instead of train, as invented by Robert F. Zurel, raised eyebrows) . Yet, ideas of industry pioneers such as Marino were real gamechangers, changing production methods in a very short time and forcing seed companies to change the production of pilled seed and to invest in germination and young plant cultivation companies.

Piero’s innovation brought the Marino company much success and among the top plant growers  in Italy and Europe. Soon his ideas were copied and imitated.

Piero’s visionary entrepreneurship also led to the establishment of many new companies, including Gianpaolo Polesel’s Resteya, as well as Resma, one of first manufacturers of sowing machines, staking machines, and transplanters.

Faced with growing competition, Piero started to grow plants in Spain and acquired the Azienda Agricola Canavesana in Front Canavese, back then a large greenhouse complex producing mainly ornamental plants.

Left to right Cristina Nilssen, Piero Marino, Claudio Gambetta, Jens Tøfte, Annajole Tonelli ed Einar Nilssen posing in the Dæhenfeldt’s greenhouse in Odense in 1993.

At that point, luck began to turn against him, a hailstorm destroyed almost the entire glass roof of the greenhouses in Front Canavese, competition became increasingly fierce and perhaps also a certain administrative unpreparedness led Piero Marino to sell Canavesana, then the shares in Spain and finally the company in Carmagnola, which became Marino srl.

Piero Marino’s story does not end here; towards the end of the 1980s he traveled  to Costa Rica, where he managed the production of Marco Hidalgo’s Pocosol Company, specialised in the production of Dracaena and other tropical foliage plants.

In his spare time, Piero made long walks in the tropical forest in search of new plant species to adapt them to ornamental horticulture. After four years  he returned to Europe, first to Spain, then to Italy’s Veneto region, where he worked at the Botanical Company and met Nives Silotto, who from that moment on would become his partner until the end of his life

Meeting Nives changed  Piero’s life profoundly, which until then had been extremely disorderly, but his passion for the search for innovation continued. In the greenhouse of Nives’ company Si.Flor, he began the genetic improvement programme of Primula veris and violets, obtaining an important varietal assortment; he then moved production to Croatia, giving life to the Novi-Gen project in which  his son Luca was also involved. Later, Luca would take over the management of the company.

Piero completed his work in Primula and Viola breeding but soon realised that the market had become too complex  to operate internationally and grow only one or two plant species. So, as he grew older and the first health issues appeared, he decided to leaves the research activity to the Padana Group, the company his son continues to work with.

Piero’s health continued to detoriate, his mind began to leave him, but his companion Nives, with great sacrifice, remained at his side until the end, together with his daughters and Luca.

This is the short story of a genius, crazy, unruly, who did not care about money, rules, promises, who did everything he could, … but for me he was a great friend … with him I shared extraordinary and unrepeatable moments of life, even difficult ones, in Carmagnola, at Flormart in Padua, in Costa Rica, in Spain in Valencia and Castellon, in Denmark, and finally in San Vendemiano. Thank you Piero!.

Piero is survived by the family of Nives Silotto and his son Luca Marino, by myself and all the flower growers who, consciously or unconsciously, continue to benefit from Piero’s innovative ideas.