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Even though there was a gardener on staff, it was a family custom to let each child have a small piece of land to make a garden. Pier Giorgio enjoyed working his little land in Pollone.
In 1908, when he was just seven years old, he wrote to his parents telling them, "All these days that it's been nice outside we have gone to the garden." Of course, there were beautiful flower gardens on the property that Pier Giorgio also loved. He continued, "There are some beautiful roses, and also some poppies, and some geraniums, and some vanilla. ... In the evening, I am going to the garden with Grandmother."
On September 20, 1913, in a letter to his mother, he wrote, "I am picking fruit, and today I weeded the rows of my vegetable garden, which was full of weeds." Pier Giorgio didn't avoid the hard jobs. In October 1913, he wrote to his father, "This morning I helped the gardener carry the flowerpots. The upper garden is all spaded; if it stops raining I will spread the manure."
When Pier Giorgio was 16, the gardener was called away to do military service. Pier Giorgio, always willing to go the extra mile, took an agricultural course at a local institute to be of even greater help with the family gardens. He was doing this in the summer of 1918 when he wrote to his friend Carlo Bellingeri, "I've spent the last two weeks of July working in the garden and helping the gardener, who happened to be on leave."