His favorite plant is Cosmos bipinnatus because it sums up his passion for gardening and astronomy. Juan Miceli He is curious, enthusiastic, likes to know and enjoy life as much as he can. And he is also a person who makes an effort in everything, as he confesses: “Nothing is easy for me, I got used to the effort”.
He was born in Necochea and lived there until he was ten years old. An unforgettable, glorious childhood. “I lived half a block from the sea, I went to the beach almost every day and spent a lot of time with my friends playing there, and I also went a lot to my uncle Juan Pedro’s field,” he recalls.
When he was 16, he lived with a family in Seattle for six months as an exchange student. She went to a public school with people of different nationalities. He was so excited about the possibility of a cosmopolitan life that he decided to do a degree in International Relations, but he did not practice.
He came to journalism by chance at a time of labor shortage. He worked on America, Channel 13 and TN, Public TV, Infobae and La Nación and on radio. They were thirty intense and interesting years professionally.
In 2019 the journalistic cycle closed and a totally different stage began. He now he is engaged in landscaping and gardening. He owns the company long live the earth, together with its partners Gonzalo Manrique and Milagros Seijas, where they offer gardening, landscaping and workshop services. He is also a partner at the Cuatro Estaciones studio (Fernanda Darchivio, Majo Coppis, Josefina Torres and Miceli) in Necochea. There they made the design of three public squares that they donated to the neighbors and, in addition, they make private gardens. This year, in addition, he participated in the Hotel of the Famous.
News: What did journalism leave you?
Juan Miceli: It was the pillar of my working life. He left me friends, I traveled a lot, I did incredible international coverage —three presidential elections in the United States, the election of Mandela in South Africa, the arrival of Che’s remains in Cuba, the funerals of Lady Di, the war in Lebanon in the ‘ 94, among others—and the journalistic investigation stage was also very important. I entered and left journalism with a clean file, I think I resist the file. I could have been wrong, but I always worked for nothing more than my salary and with total honesty and transparency. I don’t know if everyone can say it.
News: And how do you see current journalism?
Miceli: The crack is very installed and it is very difficult to practice journalism as before. If you’re in the middle you’re like with a shirt on and it’s almost impossible to get out of the editorial line.
News: Strange?
Miceli: No. I did a lot and lived a golden stage, that Telenoche of the nineties that I believe was the best of the last years of television journalism. And I am very grateful to the people I worked with, Mónica and César, Santo Biasatti, my colleagues from La Nación, the radio station. Technology, networks changed everything and today is something else.
News:How was the decision to close that cycle?
Miceli: It was meditated, I am usually quite reflective. I began to notice that I didn’t enjoy it as much, that I felt uncomfortable with some situation because of how journalism is nowthere is a lot of fighting and I don’t like to fight, there is a lot of personal aggression, it is very dirty. I can have a debate, an argument, but not the insult, the threat. Also, life flies and, like being in an amusement park, I want to get on as many rides as I can.
News: How did the change impact you?
Miceli: It rejuvenated me, I feel again like when I was in my twenties and everything was new. I’m excited about the challenge and what’s to come. I feel like I have a lot to grow. With journalism I was already at a plateau, when you do something for a long time you lose that magic a little.
News: And why gardening?
Miceli: I always had that link with the countryside, the land, the plants. In addition, I already had agricultural training because I am an agricultural technician. So, I decided to study landscaping and I studied two years of gardening at the UBA. I saw that there was a work facet and I left.
News: How is your life today?
Miceli: I have a job as a landscape gardener, I always study, I love it and now I am finishing a course in therapeutic horticulture.
News: What is it about?
Miceli: Horticulture as therapy. In Europe and the United States it is highly developed. There are hospitals and doctors who prescribe this type of therapy to accompany the treatment for the cure of diseases. It applies to children with autism, with Down Syndrome, for people with cancer, for older adults. I want to develop and spread it in the country.
News: What kind of gardens do you like?
Miceli: Now there is a naturalist trend in design, which I join, where man is no longer the center and the garden is not a luxurious object, which is used for his benefit, but a space of natural biodiversity. where are the plants, the birds, the bugs. You don’t have to be so above the plants, the garden has to express itself freely.
News: What are insect hotels?
Miceli: It’s wonderful, I’m about to make one. It is a little wooden house in the garden where you put branches, dry leaves and there the insects will live and that improves the pollination of the flowers.
News: Speaking of hotels, why did you agree to participate in “The Famous Hotel” and how was the experience?
Miceli: I accepted with some doubtsbut I’m also at an age where I allow myself more things than before. I learned to do what I think is right no matter what they think. It is a permission that I give myself for a while now. I did it also to use a massive and popular program and talk about gardening. That a reality show gave space to gardening, even if it was five minutes, was a success for me.
News: He has another passion, astronomy.
Miceli: Yes, I always liked it. I was eight years old and we went out with my uncle to see the starry sky in the countryside and it was wonderful. There I met the Tres Marías, the Siete Cabritos, the Lucero. Over time I learned that they were constellations, then I read “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan, I began to have a notion of astronomical distances, the origin of the Earth, the Big Bang, how infinite everything is and how brief ours is. I have a telescope and I am a fan of NASA, I went three times and I have a keychain, t-shirts, a poster. I look at the stars and I can recognize some constellations with the naked eye. It is the vocation that I have to know because this happens quickly. We are a shooting star. That’s why I don’t understand so much fighting, so much crack.
News: In short, he is passionate.
Miceli: Very passionate. Sagan said: “It is very likely that we are the only ones in the Universe and it is very likely that we are not the only ones”. In either case, the answer is fascinating.
