In Dream of Italy’s October issue, Special Report: Amalfi Coast, guest editor Barrie Kerper asked a few residents and habituées of the Amalfi Coast about what they especially love about this special coastline. We published a number of tips in the newsletter but didn’t have room for them all, so here are some additional favorite things:
Carla Capalbo, author,The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania 
recommends:
- The vegetable garden at Punta Campanella: Alfonso Iaccarino’s vegetable garden for his famous two-star Michelin restaurant, Don Alfonso 1890, is in the completely unspoiled, UNESCO-site peninsula, Punta Campanella. It once housed a Greek temple, and has been left intact for millenia. Alfonso and his wife, Livia, bought it when it was a wild jungle, and have lovingly retamed it, planting it with dozens of varieties of native southern Italian olive trees, and all the indigenous vegetables his kitchen loves to serve. These are the luckiest vegetables on earth, as they look out on only one thing: the island of Capri surrounded by the blue Mediterranean.
Leni Attanasio, owner, with her husband, Palazzo Murat, Positano recommends:
- the restaurants Acqua Pazza in Cetara; Da Gemma trattoria in Amalfi; Capo D’Orso in Salerno; Il Grottino Azzurro in Positano; Donna Rosa in Montepertuso; and La Tagliata, between Montepertuso and Nocelle.
Giulia Sersale, Supervisor, Plants and Flowers, Le Sirenuse, Positano recommends:
- mortella, the beautiful Mediterranean plant known as wild myrtle that thrives here. La Mortella (the place of the myrtles) is also the name of the garden on the nearby island of Ischia that was created by Lady Susanna Walton, wife of Sir William Walton, a noted British composer. Designed by English landscape architect Russell Page, La Mortella is one of the world’s great gardens, with rainforest trees, fountains, lotus pools, scented plants, olives, and wild roses. HRH Prince Charles is the patron of La Mortella, and recently a book was published, La Mortella: An Italian Garden Paradise, (New Holland Publishers, 2002). DOI readers who are garden enthusiasts may also be interested in the Mediterranean Garden Society.