My sweet gourd

Clark Lawrence, an American living in the heart of Italy's pumpkin province, loves growing different cultivars of pumpkins and ornamental gourds for their sweet flavours and fabulous looks

- Clark Lawrence

Pumpkins bring joy – just place the little, white variety called ‘Baby Boo’ in the hands of a small child and watch their eyes light up. When they are a few years older, pass them a bright-orange pumpkin such as ‘Sankt Martin’ that weighs about the same as a newborn baby, and they will often hug and cuddle it.

Being American, I have always loved pumpkins, gourds, ornamental corn and anything from the garden that Americans associate with late-summer harvests and Halloween. I now garden in Mantua, in perhaps the most famous pumpkin province of Italy, and grow oddities nobody else in the area knows about – I figure there’s no need to grow the same delicious edible pumpkins Italians already do, so have specialised in ornamental gourds, most small enough to fit into the palm of your hand.

My vegetable garden is only 20m x 22m and almost half of it is shaded by four walnut trees that I don’t have the heart to cut down, so I have to grow vertically on bamboo sticks and trellises. I grow popcorn, sunflowers, heirloom beans, amaranth, zinnias, shiso and a few different species of Ipomoea to create a bit of a jungle scene. Castor oil plants in deep reds and dark green add height, colour and botanical interest. But it is really the pumpkins that rule here. The whole space is dominated by a gourd tunnel, which runs down the middle of the garden, shading a brick walk and dividing my ten vegetable beds into two rows of five.

I’ve tried growing many kinds of Cucurbitaceae, including the sweet-smelling, tennis-ball-sized Queen Anne’s pocket melon (Cucumis melo), luffa (Luffa aegyptiaca), kiwano (Cucumis metuliferus) and cucamelons, also known as mouse melons (Melothria scabra). Any of the prickly cucumbers (Cucumis hirsutus, Cucumis dipsaceus, Cucumis myriocarpus, Cucumis africanus) make a great trellis cover and can also be grown in large pots on a balcony.