The vegetable garden of Tenuta Asmara

The garden is knowledge, failure, hope, sympathy and play; a synthesis of emotions.

We cultivate out of passion, little does it matter if we make mistakes, if everything is not perfect, what matters is that it is sincere. We do not follow synergistic logics, waterless gardens or even ancestral rituals, we simply follow our own path listening to everyone because everyone can teach us something; we put together and strip away theories and reasoning and by virtue of them we create the path. That is why our garden is always moving, always distinct, the next year different from the previous one with steps back and steps forward. Little does it matter. Ours is a quest toward a balance that to be such must change as conditions change, an unspoken agreement between nature and needs, between wild beauty and purposeful aesthetics, again and again like children who do not know what they prefer. We like to sit back and observe, and listen, and smell, and only then, if it suits, realize.

This year’s compromise is based on water management in our “earthen tanks,” placed in almost extreme conditions without shelter from the sun.
We have thus placed inside them terracotta pots that we will constantly fill with water: terracotta being a material of natural origin performs in the presence of moisture a cooling and refreshing action in the soil keeping the roots of the small seedlings well watered, the straw concurs in this process by keeping the soil soft and in turn cool while its slow decomposition produces humus necessary for nourishment.
Since we are Italians and, moreover, also Tuscans, for us beauty matters almost as much as functionality and we love to “mix the clods with the sky” (quoting Curzio Malaparte), so our idea of a vegetable garden cannot but contemplate the presence of edible flowers of heterogeneous shapes and colors that have the dual function of aesthetics and edibility. The aromatic part of these besides attracting pollinating insects gratifies us with intense and pleasant scents.

The varieties of plants we use in this context are readily available because we want everyone to be able, if they want, to begin such a journey themselves, to do with what can readily be found.