School education, a competition for vegetable garden projects
Promoted by the Lazzaro Spallanzani Institute, which has three locations in Emilia Romagna, it is an inter-student competition to create family-sized green spaces where horticultural crops and decorative plants are combined. Some FederUnacoma Technical Service representatives attended as judges
As part of the ongoing training activities and collaborations between FederUnacoma and agricultural-oriented high schools, engineers from the Federation's Technical Service, Lorenzo Iuliano and Domenico Papaleo, were invited by Professor Raffaella Siriani (among the coordinating teachers and main promoters of the event) to participate as judges in the first "Il Gran Lazzar-ONE" trophy, promoted by the Lazzaro Spallanzani Higher Education Institute. The award is based on the idea of a group of teachers from various school addresses to test and challenge the most deserving pupils in a contest.
The school -which is characterized by a varied and heterogeneous activity on the Technical Agricultural, Professional Agricultural and Professional Enogastronomic addresses- is interested in cohesion initiatives between the various articulations and between the multiple locations (as many as three in the province of Modena: Castelfranco Emilia, Vignola and Montombraro). Hence, 15 finalists divided into four categories were selected from all 400 students: Cooking, Bar Room, Hospitality and Agrarian (with as many as 6 competitors).
For the latter, the competition was to create an aesthetically pleasing and functional summer vegetable garden design for a family's needs, in which the contestants' skill was to combine horticultural crops, herbs and flowers best, justifying each choice made. The design idea had to juxtapose different elements best while trying to create a balanced ecosystem rich in biodiversity, considering combinations that would allow for natural pest control, ease in attracting pollinator insects and encourage pollination, but also some consistency with the definition of a vegetable garden, affinities and benefits of intercropping between plants as well as a scalarity of harvesting periods.
After the in-class design using software support, the competition also included the creation of a greenhouse garden in order to evaluate the 'in-field' skills of the contestants and, finally, the in-class description of the entire activity to assess the appropriate use of technical terminology and expository skills.
The task of the FederUnacoma judges, who had to evaluate in particular the performance of the Agrarian boys, was not easy since the six boys all turned out to be prepared and motivated, and the projects all appeared to be creative and well set up, moreover presented in a festive context, also thanks to the involvement of the boys of the "Inclusion Group" of the same institute, who made refreshments based on local products.
After careful consultation, the standings were outlined as follows: third place went to Giovanni Paolo Pignataro (Vignola), second to Gabriele Franzaroli (Montombraro) while the winner of the contest was Sara Balestri (Monteombraro).
Still, the contest did not end there, as among the four winners in their respective categories, it was then decreed "Il Gran Lazzar-One" 2023, an award this time given ex-aequo to two girls, Adele Pruna for the "Cooking" category, and Giulia Tinarelli for the "Hospitality" category.
