Lagoon notebook · Venice
The city plants trees at the far end
The Giardini and Sant'Elena are civic ground, not a palace lawn.
Most of the historic city is stone, brick and water. Public trees are rare, which is why this notebook bothers with a gardens page. The Napoleonic gardens at the eastern end of Castello are a real park. Biennale pavilions sit among them. In exhibition years they fill. In other months they are just shade and gravel.
Sant'Elena is further east, a pine park with a football ground and a view of the basin. The Parco delle Rimembranze was planted as a war memorial. It is used as a neighbourhood garden. Children, dogs, people who live here.
If you arrived by car, this is a long walk or a vaporetto from Piazzale Roma. The edge of Castello is what you came for if the piazza already did its work.