Arriving at our winery, located in the countryside south of Desenzano del Garda , vineyards and olive trees will give you the first welcome. If you look closely, you can see rows of trees and hedges behind them. These, created to delimit the borders of the properties, have been cared for and implemented over time, as their presence brings concrete benefits to the vineyard.
Elms, cypresses, oaks, locust trees and laurel hedges are the refuge of many species of birds (in particular, in our area, passerines and starlings) that eat harmful insects: one above all, the fearsome scaphoid, responsible for the golden flavescence, so called because when it attacks the vineyard, the leaves, deprived of sap by the insect, turn towards a yellow color.
On the tree species that limit the vineyards there are also numerous useful insects , which parasitize the harmful ones. Hedges are the home, for example, of the ladybird, who is particularly fond of mites. The behavior of other "good insects", the phytoseids, is curious: when the pollen of the spring essences in the vineyard runs out, they take refuge in the borders, returning to the vineyard only to prey on the mites harmful to crops.
It is therefore clear how the green borders concretely help the health of the vineyard and, with their function as a refuge, protect biodiversity in the territories where care is taken to preserve them.
