“No.We are nature: it is our home and if we destroy it we harm ourselves ». Filippo Pizzoni, vice president of Orticola and landscape architect, speaks clearly. We still have time to reverse the trend curbing climate change and pollution.
But it serves a change of mentality, in which we are all called to participate. It is extremely significant that Orticola di Lombardia, the flower and plant exhibition that takes place every year in Milan – and that this year turns a quarter of a century -, focus your attention precisely on living in balance with nature.
L. Thunbergii of the Consonni nursery (photo Orticola)
Want to be surrounded by greenery
“There pandemic has made us all aware of the need to be outdoors, in contact with the natural environment »adds Pizzoni. “This is not new. The term “biophilia”, coined in 1984 by Edward Wilson, means “love of life”, not only for one’s own, but for all living beings, from animals to plants. Being in connection with the other is our need ».
This explains that sense of well-being we feel when we take care of a plant on the balcony, when we cultivate the vegetable garden and take care of the garden, when we walk in a wood. Contact with green regenerates us. Francesca Marzotto Caotorta, who created Orticola and is a great expert in gardeningunderlines the complexity of this relationship.
Courtesy Press Office
We live or die by nature
“Those born in the countryside know it well: of nature we live and die. It is necessary to know how to look, to understand, to seek alliances. Create a relationship with something you love. It is not enough to plant a tree: you have to follow it and know its needs. For those who commit themselves, nature reserves continuous surprises and wonder, you never stop learning “.
In these years, Orticola has promoted contact with increasingly trained nurserymen, to ask for advice. Even a plant to keep on the balcony is a living being with its needs for water, light, nourishment: it’s up to us to learn how to make it feel good, and she will not fail to reward us.
Roses with character
Roses have been the queens of our gardens for centuries. “When people are able to grow them to their best, the satisfaction they feel is enormous,” comments Michael Marriott, one of the world’s greatest rhodologists, who has worked for over 35 years at David Austin’s famous English rose nursery. “You can touch their beauty and appreciate the scent, especially when compared with certain florist roses, with little personality and fragrance ».
Courtesy
The Wise Portia rose
Marriott says he fell in love with a David Austin “Wise Portia”, seen on television: a magnificent specimen. And so, around the age of thirty, he started working in the nursery, discovering that roses are a universe, in which each has its own character, its flowers with different diameters and petals, its height – from fifteen centimeters to twenty meters! – the scent, the duration of flowering.
“The fragrance has the magical power to lift our spirits or relax us” adds Marriott, who this year will also be the guest of honor of the Orticola Botanical Jury. Since the dawn of time, medicinal plants have been grown for medicinal, herbal, cosmetic and phytotherapeutic purposes.
The garden guarantees food
And of course, also food: the garden guarantees food, but horticulture if practiced in shared spaces it also becomes an activity that favors socialization e the spirit of collaboration, contributing to the psychic well-being of people.
“Gardening in the vegetable garden or on the balcony gives a feeling of serenity: the problems disappear from the mind, it is like a return to the original Eden »comments Laura Cinzia Bassi, agronomist and designer of healing gardens (therapeutic gardens), and expert in orthotherapy. “The green color gives us an atavistic feeling of peace”.
Therapeutic gardens, green oasis
It is no coincidence that the therapeutic gardens are always finding more space inside retirement homes. “This is not just a garden in which to take a walk. The project includes paths in which the chosen plants allow you to smell scents, have tactile sensations by touching the leaves, enjoy the sight of colors and shapes ».
Inside a healing garden, sometimes there may be a space for orthotherapy. “In collaboration with the psychologist, the orthotherapist studies specific activities for each individual, according to his needs”, explains Bassi.
«Being in the green and working with living beings allows people people with physical or mental handicaps to obtain the same results as others, not to feel judged or inadequate, and strengthens self-esteem ».
More sustainable crops
The physical relationship with the plant, putting your hands in the earth is a panacea for everyone. «Being in contact with nature means being able to look at a plant in the garden, see its evolution and its mechanisms, understand for example if it gets angry because we wet it too much» comments Pizzoni. “It is an exchange relationship, because it allows us to learn, and the time we allow ourselves to take care of the plant is for ourselves ».
This aspiration to balance with nature it also translates into an innovative approach to design. «The garden is less and less expression of power and dominion over nature. We design by looking for plants suitable for the climate and place, reducing our energy and our expectations ».
BAM Library of Trees Milan (Great Italian Gardens Archive)
Stop to green chemistry
Greater harmony with nature it also passes through the renunciation, for example, of an English lawn, which requires excessive quantities of water, or continuous blooms, which involve forcing the plants. The world of roses also follows this trend. “Fewer and fewer gardeners are using chemistry,” says Marriott. “Rather, they favor varieties specially created to be more resistant to disease.”
The call of the forest
Our need for nature also passes through the call of the forest. “Walking in a forest gives peace” comments Daniele Zovi, for forty years in the Forestry Corps and writer. “It’s like entering a large community where trees, shrubs, animals communicate with each other, you feel a flow of energy. Sit leaning against a tree, silence your cell phone and close your eyes: you will feel welcomed ».
Emotions and happiness
In his latest book, In Bosco (published by Utet), Zovi tells about emotions: in every season there is something that surprises us. «The path has changed me and it changes me every time: it awakens lost memories and sensations. The sinking heart that the sight of a roe deer gives us is linked to when we too were wild, it evokes our essence. And it reminds us of the obligation we have to respect the living that surround us because we share the same home. Caress a bark, sit down and feel the dampness of the moss ». Happiness is here.
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