Stdroughts and heat waves but also floods and water bombs. The climate changes and outdoor spaces, large or small, need to be rethought. The projects of these 5 landscapers were selected a Radicepura Garden Festival. They talked to us about the need to go back to basics. And to grandma’s plants
Martina Pappalardo: «Let’s leave room for native, spontaneous, resilient plants»
«I’m passionate about gardens: among my activities, there is also the design of private terraces and parks in the field of tourist hospitality. Between Radicepura and the projects created later there was the pandemic, which led to a awareness of the importance of greenery for personal well-being.
Add to this climate change, it is impossible not to take it into account. The garden to come goes back to its origins, with native, spontaneous and resilient plants. We need to listen to the plants and create a more natural garden».
Martina Pappalardo 32 years old, master in Urban Regeneration and Social Innovation in Venice, co-designer of the winning garden at Radicepura Garden Festival 2019. She works as a freelancer in Catania
In our area, dry gardens (little irrigation and less maintenance) will increasingly respond to environmental challenges in the future. I use a lot of lavender, rosemary and aromatic plants, together with pomegranate trees, citrus fruits and shrubs such as the pistachio plant. Among the resilient ones, I like tree euphorbia and broomwhich grows on Etna up to high altitudes, where there are no other plants.
I love mixing jasmine, the true (jasmine) and the false (I recover), because they offer blooms in different periods. In Sicily we need strong plants, capable of withstanding the growing heat, winds and salt, if the garden is near the sea. This year in Radicepura I hold the workshops for children “DaGrandeVoglioFarel’Architetto”in which I also try to make people understand that protecting the environment means protecting ourselves».
Marta Prosello: «Knowing the roots to have more sustainability»
Marta Prosello 33 years old, co-designer of the “Discendere” garden at Radicepura Garden Festival 2023, works in Milan where she mainly deals with the design of terraces.
“A good designer must be first of all a good gardener. In parallel with the university, I worked for five years in a nursery, where I approached plants: a living material, which is never known enough. We are used to seeing their aerial part, but the roots work underground, nourish the plant and seek water. In the project we are presenting, we invite the public to change perspective, not only to look at the plants upwards, but also in the most hidden part.
Knowing the roots allows you to create a more sustainable garden. An example? L’German iris it grows everywhere thanks to its rhizomatous roots. In my work, after Covid there was an explosion in the demand for terraces, but the ongoing climate change requires pay attention to the water supply. There are plants that require little water in the ground, but need more in pots, such as cysts.
The “Descender” garden by Marta Prosello.
If I have to reconvert a terrace, I use Mediterranean plants: myrtle, callistemon, olive tree, lentisk together with several Salvia microphylla which has long blooms, or Verbena bonariensis with purple flowers. Tomorrow’s garden can recover grandmother’s plants that had excellent resistance to drought, such as spirea or bergenia. With a view to sustainability, it is also necessary to preserve the soil: in addition to the roots of trees, even those of small perennial and ground cover plants such as thyme, lippia nodoflora, hybrid verbena are effective against runoff. The ornamental grass is also very rustic and resistant to heat».
Linda Grisoli : «Green spaces must become less formal»
Linda Grisoli, 28, divides her time between Parma and Rome, where she is completing a doctorate. At Radicepura Garden Festival 2023 she is the co-designer of the garden “Alla Mensa di Madre Etna”.
“The garden that we present is a tribute to the biodiversity of Sicily and to the volcano as a source of life, which made the land fertile. We wanted to highlight that there are spontaneous species at risk, of which ethnobotanical knowledge is also disappearing because the custodians are now over seventy. Feeding the inhabitants of the planet will be one of the challenges of the future, it will be necessary to hybridize species to create new ones, it will be necessary to draw on new technologies, biodiversity and the ethnobotanical cultural heritage. As for the garden, every designer is the child of his historical moment.
“At the Table of Mother Etna” by Linda Grisoli.
We are living in an emergency: green spaces must become less formal, more spontaneous. My inspiration is Gilles ClementFrench landscape painter and writer: we must leave nature the freedom to manifest itselfdo not exceed with invasive interventions, become “guardians of the unpredictable”. Climate change requires us to pay attention to sustainability, creating a garden is no longer just an aesthetic gesture.
We must aim at saving water, at choices that are not extraneous to the cultural context of the landscape. Even in gardens in northern Italy we can use succulents, agaves, then strawberry trees, viburnums, laurels, photinias that tolerate smog well. Mediterranean plants offer a remarkable variety. Evaluating the context, I would also use bamboo: it is not native, but it has great potential for absorbing carbon dioxide».
Lucia Angelini: «No to the English lawn, yes to flowers»
Lucia Angelini, 35 years old, specialized at the Agricultural School of Monza and is also a gardener by passion. She works as a freelancer in Ferrara. His “Giardino Lineare” was awarded at the Radicepura Garden Festival in 2021.
«The “Linear Garden” was a green space for cities, to be placed between the road, cycle path and sidewalk, from 50 cm to 1.5 m wide and infinitely long, with salvias, lavender, agapanthus, santolinas, etc. Working on this project, I realized how fast the climate is changing: the average temperature has grown, increase the days of the year with more than 25 degrees and tropical nights when it’s over 20 degrees. Plants struggle to recover and rehydrate.
“Linear Garden” by Lucia Angelini
Even our idea of a garden must necessarily change. The lawn should be replaced with flowering meadows (for example, Lippia nodoflora, Zoysia) that need irrigation only the first two years after planting, then they become autonomous, to be wetted once only in case of severe summer drought. Among the tree plants, beautiful and resistant Lagerstroemia and Amelanchier canadensis. Equally resilient are many herbaceous plants: sage nemorosa “Caradonna” it’s wonderful, santolines and yarrows they give movement, senecio and helichrysis give off gray-silver hues.
In the garden to come, there is also room for the chaste tree with its purple ears, many grasses including stipe and Miscanthus. They are perfect too Sedum, which require little water and are heat resistant. Among the bulbous plants, a wide choice: I like the bellflower and Allium christophii. For a flowery autumn, we should rediscover chrysanthemums: there are different varieties from those worn by the dead».
Sara Stojaković: «More gardens, to have healthy cities»
Sara Stojaković 34 years old, Croatian, has worked for various Viennese studios ranging in design from private gardens to large-scale international competitions. She is a freelancer in Zagreb, she at Radicepura Garden Festival, she is co-designer of “Shadow and Stone”.
«There is not a single Mediterranean landscape, but many. My sources of inspiration were the works of Olivier and Anna Filippi, defined “guru” of the dry gardenand my travels in Greece and elsewhere, where I was able to grasp how each place has its specific plants.
The garden we have created is an exploration of a space we know well, in Croatia. Here hardy plants that love the sun like sage, the mountain savory and wild thyme they mix with a Mediterranean forest with evergreen bushes such as viburnum tino, laurel, ilatro, mastic which coexist with trees that love the heat such as hop hornbeam, manna ash and lesser maple. Among the flowering plants, the chaste tree and the yellow sage (Phlomis fruticosa).
“Shadow and Stone” by Sara Stojakovic.
Today a garden designer has to deal not only with aesthetics, but with sustainability, water scarcity, biodiversity. Gardens are part of a larger landscape and serve not only people but also pollinators and other small animals. We need more public gardens, especially in southern Europe, to have healthy cities. A sustainable garden must be based on the plant communities that occur naturally in the surroundings, that they get along without too much care. Among my favourites, the red valerian and the iris. In Sicily I was struck by fennel (Ferula communis) that grows along the roads, would be spectacular in a garden».
The biennial of the Mediterranean landscape
The “Come back to Itaca” project by Martina Pappalardo
The fourth edition of Radicepura Garden Festival, the biennial of the Mediterranean landscape promoted by the Radicepura Foundation held in Giarre (CT) e which presents 15 gardens and four installations in its botanical park. The theme that acts as a leitmotif for this year’s creations it is the garden of plants.
The selected projects highlight the botanical element. The goal is to promote a different style of garden capable of affirming, according to the organisers, a conscious belonging to the natural world. In addition to a selection of young talents, Maestro Paolo Pejrone also participates in this edition with his garden “Wind and Water, attempts at resilience”. The competition jury is chaired by the patroness of the festival, the English landscape architect Sarah Eberle, winner of over 19 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. The symbol chosen for this edition is the carob tree, a resistant and long-lived evergreen tree, present in the Sicilian territory and in southern Italy.
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