Si in hortum bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit
If next to a library you have a vegetable garden, you will lack nothing
– Marcus Tullius Cicero,
Epistulae ad familiares
(letters to family members), 1st cent. BCE.
A photograph faded by time: it all starts from here, an image with more than 35 years that becomes revealing. A girl and two boys, a few years difference, a sincere, true friendship, without masks.
Seasons pass, situations change but values do not, they remain there, anchored to something despite changing events; the same children who were once friends and playmates are now grown up, have different lifestyles but find themselves at the same spot exactly where they left off.
They look into each other’s eyes and come across those funny, shaggy faces in the middle of the countryside who with fervent exchanges of opinion between a joke and a prank now as then think of something to do and that is how our project was born.
Our philosophy
As children we change but remain the same in substance.
We cultivate out of passion, it matters little if we make mistakes, if everything is not perfect, what is important is that it is sincere.
We do not follow synergistic logic, waterless gardens or even ancestral rituals, we simply follow our own path by listening to everyone because everyone can teach us something; we put together and strip away theories and reasoning and by virtue of them 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.
Hesitancy? Indecision? Improvisation?
It may be, we simply like to sit and observe, and listen, and smell, and only then, if it is convenient, 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.
For those who want to stop even for a little while to breathe and listen to our ideas we are gladly available;
for those who simply want to enjoy the scents and flavors we give what the garden gives us; for those who are not interested, no problem, we stay here, smile and take another picture.