Concerto di Natale, Basilica di San Marco, Milan, Italy.

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There are things that happen just at Christmas time. A chorus of children, in long blue robes, singing traditional carols in a cold church in a December evening is one of them.
A small orchestra of violins, with an oboe and a trumpet, accompanied the little voices and the talented soloists in the sacred music composed by Antonio Vivaldi in the eighteenth century, and in famous Italian and English Christmas songs. Following the hands of the young director, touching voices and notes filled the naves of the San Marco Basilica in Milan, ascending the pillars of the thirteenth century up to a vaulted ceiling accustomed to silent prayers. Sparkles of gold radiated from the altar. Details of frescos and marbles appeared in the dim light. Candles burnt in front of chapels adorned with sober flower decorations. In the last chapel on the right, the ancient story of the Nativity was told by the elegant and fragile figures of a paper crib of the eighteenth century. Francesco Londonio, Italian portrait painter and engraver, interpreted this tradition creating two scenes with these life-size characters painted on paper glued on wooden structures. In the background, the newborn Babe laid in the manger, his little arms wide open, surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and humble characters kneeled in prayer. They looked at the Babe with marvel and hope, a musician with a trumpet, peasants and shepherds in their poor dresses with a sheep or a basket of fruit, a pilgrim without shoes next to a man with an horse. In the foreground, the three Magi paid homage to the Child. The three Oriental kings came in procession in their rich mantles, ermine capes, golden crowns and turban to offer gold, incense and myrrh to the little Child. On the right, a group of children took care of their exotic dromedaries. But, there was no time to linger on the minute, exquisite details of the composition; music captured all the attention. The Gloria in Excelsis Deo was soon finished, people hurried home after greetings and embraces, the head full of notes, the hearts full of joy.   

Notes:
Concerto di Natale, (Christmas Concert)
20th December 2012, Milan
Piccoli Cantori di San Marco
Le Voci del Mesma
Orchestra Ars Liberalis

Program:
Neve, Gloria, Adeste fideles, LAUDAMUS TE, Domine Deus , In una greppia, Propter magnam gloriam, La danza dei pastori, Domine Fili Unigenite, CUM SANCTO SPIRITU, What child is this? God Rest You Merry, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, Hark!The Herald Angels Sing

Raccolto in preghiera, Aldo Mondino, Milan.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.

In a chilly day of winter, I would carefully sweep the floor and make room for a large carpet. I would heap thick layers of grains creating geometric patterns with dark brown and green minute lentils, orange corn and white small grains of rice. It would be a prayer carpet, an homage to Raccolto in preghiera (In prayer), the floor installation created by Aldo Mondino (1938-2005) in 1986.

In 1993, the Italian artist presented this work at the International Art Exhibition held in Venice, Venice Biennale. The carpet measured around 3x5 metres and was made with 50 kilos of grains, such as rice, peas, chickpeas and lentils. The first idea, however, dates back to the eighties, and to the oriental atmospheres absorbed during one of his trips to Morocco. Northern African countries fascinated Mondino. Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, but also Spain, reconciled him with his Jewish origins and offered, to this curious and open-minded artist, endless inspiration and freedom. Imagination and reality mingled creating a unique atmosphere; in his words, it was “like being immersed in a picture.”1 Walking around, his ironic, playful and short-sighted eye captured, often by chance, objects, colours and characters later elaborated in original and impeccable compositions. The series entitled Carpets, for example, was conceived during a walk in the Soko Chico, the small market place in Tangier. Here, a panel of building material confused with a carpet with fringes inspired to Mondino the idea of painting carpets on this wood-cement surface. Experimenting with different materials and techniques was not unusual for this artist, who worked with lamps, candies, sugar and chocolate, but part of his need to find newer and freer languages.

The starting point for Raccolto in preghiera was connected to Tangier too, and to his meeting with the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri. Mondino developed the mosaic of grains sold in the souk in geometric shapes on the floor: rectangles, triangles and long parallel rows that seem to return the stylized shape of a mihrab. The prayer niche, the Door of Paradise that in mosques points towards the Mecca showing the direction of the prayer, transforms the funny design of grains into a prayer carpet. Essential object in the Muslims’ daily rites, it offers a pristine surface for the moment of devotion and guides the worshipper with the symbols and messages hidden in its patterns.  Mondino, however, did not ascribe symbolic meanings to his works. He was more interested in other aspects, such as the suggestions created by the connections between words and objects. In this work, they evoke the prayer, an intense and silent moment, for Mondino, similar to painting. He interpreted this solemn and fleeting instant creating a temporary work that recalls other countries and cultures, but with an amused eye, as none is supposed to kneel and pray on this carpet made of grains.

I would look at my carpet, an ephemeral carpet that another sweep will turn into a pile of grains.

1 Incontro con Aldo Mondino. L’arte come luogo di preghiera e di interazione per un altrove, a cura di Luciano Marucci, Hortus, semestrale di poesia e arte, Arti visive, Stamperia dell’Arancio, Grottammare, 22/1998. Pg. 277.

Further reading:
Incontro con Aldo Mondino. L’arte come luogo di preghiera e di interazione per un altrove, a cura di Luciano Marucci, Hortus, semestrale di poesia e arte, Arti visive, Stamperia dell’Arancio, Grottammare, 22/1998.

Links:
Aldo Mondino Fundation
http://www.aldomondino.it/news

Photos:
Travelinagarden, except for 
Tappeto, 1985, olio su eraclite, 143 × 200 cm from Aldo Mondino Archive 
http://www.aldomondino.it/opere/dettaglio/90

Babylonstoren - South Africa: a double inspiration.

In August 2011, works were in progress when I visited Babylonstoren, an old Dutch farm in the Cape Winelands in South Africa. Scaffoldings surrounded the white thick walls of an old building near the parking, drawing my attention to the architectural heritage of the first settlers. Thatched roofs, grand gables and dazzling whitewashed walls featured the H-shaped main house and the old outbuildings, some of which date back to the origins of the farm, and were echoed in the newly built guest cottages. I found a property with the charm and solidity of the 17th century and the freshness and efficiency of our days, a smiling, inspiring and ever-changing place that invites you to discovery and relaxation. The garden is in the centre of this homestead, hidden from the road that connects Cape Town to Franschhoek by the farm buildings, trees, vineyards and cultivated fields. It is an eight-acre formal garden, a huge rectangle overflowing with life arranged along three main axes. Rectilinear paths cross them, creating a grid of themed flowerbeds filled with herbs, fruit trees and vegetables, edged by espaliered apple trees and low walls, and dotted with pergolas of roses, pots, ponds, and simple benches. There is a double inspiration behind this garden: the tradition of the Company’s Garden and the suggestions of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the name of a French architect, Patrice Taravella, who developed it.

Plan of the Company's Garden, Peter Kolb (1727)

The creation of the future Company’s Garden was among the first tasks of the earliest settlers that founded Cape Town on April 7th, 1652. Under the command of Jan van Riebeeck, and the order of the Dutch East India Company, they set up an outpost to supply the Company’s vessels with fresh water, vegetables and fruit during their journeys towards India. Near the fort, a rectangular plot of land was cleared from weeds, ploughed and divided into smaller parcels. The gardeners sowed and planted with stubborn enthusiasm, but it took at least one year before they could manage the sudden wind-gales, terrible storms, floods and excessive dryness that had compromised so many crops. They planted trees as windbreak and local shrubs along the boundaries as protection from wild animals; a ditch surrounded the Garden and an irrigation system was arranged. Gardeners worked hard, learning from their experience, experimenting with plants from other parts of the world but also cultivating the indigenous food and medicinal plants the natives used. Over the years, the Garden flourished and expanded, producing vegetables, herbs, cereals, fruit and vines for the increasing population of Cape Town and the Dutch vessels that called at Cape of Good Hope. Ornamental plants were introduced and, by the end of the seventeenth century, the Company’s Garden became famous for its activities of propagation and cultivation of the local flora, whose beauty and richness had attracted the attention of many European plant collectors. It was the first step towards the future of botanical and pleasure garden that we see today in central Cape Town.

The garden at Babylonstoren recalls the first years of the Company’s Garden in many ways, but the most immediately perceptible are its shape and division in regular smaller beds, and cultivations that privilege useful and edible plants. Vegetables beds change according to the seasons. In August, the end of winter in the southern hemisphere, grey-green cabbages stood out among orange and yellow nasturtiums and a coat of crispy straw, contrasting with rows of glossy green beets with a purple heart. A long row of figs warmed up against a wall. The long and patient work of pruning the espaliered fruit trees was nearly completed when I visited the garden, revealing the geometrical rigid shapes of the bare branches of apples, quinces and pears. More than 300 fruit trees are planted in separate beds, from “Almond + Bees” to “Subtropical.” “Berries,” for example, is a promise of soft, tasty, red and blue summer fruits, with a selection of 90 plants of blueberries, 10 for each of the 9 cultivars from Brigitta to Tiff Blue, 16 gooseberries, 40 blackberries, 34 raspberries and 12 redcurrant. “Stone Fruit” is the triumph of apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, kiwi and granadilla. At Babylonstoren, the daily harvest is the raw material for Babel, the restaurant opened in 2010 in an old sheep enclosure. The original structure was retained, enclosed with glass panes, and equipped with an appropriate modern interior. Here, vegetables from the garden often end up not only in the recipes but also on the tables, as original centrepieces.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Assyrian interpretation

The name of the restaurant, Babel, reminds the second driving idea in the creation of the garden. Babylonstoren, or “the tower of Babel,” is the name of the hill beyond the garden, a focal point that guides the eye along the cultivations towards the open fields and the blue sky. The “tower of Babel” was the biblical tower that stretched out towards the heaven, built after the Great Flood. A symbol of arrogance and pride that God punished scattering people over the face of the world and confounding their language. Antique sources identify the place where the tower of Babel was built in Babylon, from the Hebrew babel or confusion. The city of Babylon, built in the fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, today Iraq, was also famed for the Hanging Gardens, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The debate about the location, use, structure, but also the very existence of the mythical gardens is still going on. Beyond the historical truth, however, I was fascinated by the descriptions of the legendary Gardens handed down over the centuries. The Gardens were built as terraces supported by tiers of arches whose vaulted roofs in stone, protected with reeds and tar, were reinforced with baked bricks and cement, isolated with lead, and covered with a thick layer of earth so that every kind of tree could thrive. An ingenious, as much as invisible, irrigation system connected to the river was also created. It was a garden of abundance and pleasure, a sumptuous and refined place, perhaps, the gift of King Nebuchadnezz to his wife Amytis, who was homesick for her native mountains in Media.

The images of these two different gardens inspired Patrice Taravella when he started his work at Babylonstoren in 2009. The French architect, garden designer and writer took to South Africa his experience and knowledge, and the architecture and atmosphere of his medieval garden in France, the Prieuré Notre-Dame d'Orsan. His work at Babylonstoren continues. His last addition, created with Terry de Waal, is the “puff adder” walkway, a timber tunnel that winds along a stream like a snake, among olives and eucalypts, protecting the tender clivia lilies from the sun.

Last year, works were in progress when I left Babylonstoren. Where masons collected their tools and wrapped their pipes, architects rolled up their designs, and gardeners checked for the last time the shapes of future scented flowerbeds, a superb garden took shape.



Further reading:
The Smallest Kingdom, Mike and Liz Fraser, Kew Publishing, 2011.   

Identifying the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: The Tamarisk and Date-Palm, August, 25, 2011
http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/
Dalley, Stephanie, Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Resolved, Garden History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1993), pp. 1-13. Retrieved from:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587050

Links:
Babylonstoren, R45 Road, between Paarl and Franschoek, Franschhoek, South Africa
www.babylonstoren.com/

Prieurité Notre Dame d'Orsan, Maisonnais, Patrick Taravella
http://prieuredorsan.com/

Photos:
TravelinaGarden
except :
Plan of the Company's Garden, Peter Kolb (1727).
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/facilities/Pages/TheoriginshistoryTheCompanyGarden.aspxhttp://www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/facilities/Pages/TheoriginshistoryTheCompanyGarden.aspx
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Assyrian interpretation
http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/

Autumnal reflections on a boat.

I wish I could turn back time and start again from September 1st. 

I would have stayed longer in Paris with my nieces.

I would have escaped for a long-long weekend in New York to visit the promising exhibition “Monet’s Garden” at the New York Botanical Garden.

I would not have bought a pair of expensive moccasins of the most beautiful suede but of an impossible yellow. 

I would have finished to read "Tolstoy, A Russian Life" by Rosamund Barlett.

I would have written tons of new POSTS for my blog AND tons of excellent ARTICLES that English editors of gardening magazines could not have rejected.

I would have completed the presentation of my graduation thesis to be held in Venice.

I would have changed my job so that I could have joined the small group that will leave from London for two weeks between Kyoto and Tokyo in the magical autumn season.

It is five o'clock in the afternoon, Sunday October 7th, and I'm sailing on the Lake Como towards Como and the train station. I spent my day at Orticolario, the flower show held in autumn at the elegant Villa Erba, in Cernobbio. The sun is still shining on the lake, and a long queue of people is waiting to be boarded at the pier, to reach the fourth edition of this event. 

The day has quickly passed, and, just to mention flowers, I noticed there were few hydrangeas and camelia sasanqua but a very good choice of asters, with beautiful combinations of violet-mauve-pink-white flowers, different heights and simple or double corollas. There were dianthus, gaura, anemone japonica and cheap violets for winter flower-beds. Roses and orchids were the stars of the show, but not my first interest. I preferred some small, specialized productions, with informed and passionate sellers and good plants, such as ferns and heuchera. Apples, pears and grapes, on display on tables, created more interest than usual for the old varieties of fruit trees. Peonies and iris rested in big boxes where beautiful pictures tempted shy buyers. 

I discovered the “cassetta di piante” (box of plants). This is a practical and elegant planter, to be anchored outside the window, where a young French company, based in Paris, Le vert à soi, creates a true small landscape, transforming austere facades in hanging gardens.

Young students from a Dutch school of floral decorations held an interesting demonstration with seasonal flowers. I missed that of the Italian school because I left to listened to two famous Italian writers, talking about their last books and about their love for nature and gardens.

Along a path, I was surprised by two big hearts pierced by an arrow. After a quick inspection, it resulted the most sober topiary of the stand. Alexander Pope would have been inspired with a few new lines to his "Catalogue of Greens," the well-known satire against topiary dated 1713, something like: 

   
     Two hearts in Privet; one very large, full of hope and love, and one smaller, crushed by 
     an arrow that has lost direction and move.

I stopped thinking about my list of impossible desires to write true rhymes in Pope's style.

Links:
Orticolario, Villa Erba Como, Italy (to be ready for next year)
www.orticolario.it/ 
Le vert à soit, Paris, France.
http://levertasoi.fr/index2.php?rub=20

My Grandmother's Magnolia.

The pure-white perfumed petals of Magnolia grandiflora are fading in crunchy biscuits in the heat of these summer days.

Magnolias remind me of my grandmother and of the imposing specimen that grew in her garden. From the entrance gate, the magnolia filled the view at the end of a short gravelled slope that, flanking the left side of the house, led to a courtyard. Flowers were cultivated on both sides of the slope. On the left, parallel to a thick laurel hedge that hid the boundary wall, different small shrubs sank in the soft turf, while, on the right, against the house, a fragrant lippia citriodora, roses, wallflowers and daisies thrived in three ordered terraced flowerbeds edged with jasmine nudiflorum. Here, in early spring, my grandmother sowed lettuce, and, later in season, she stuffed all empty spaces among flowers with vigorous tomatoes, basil, parsley and spinaches. Practical needs never suffocated her pleasure for simple flowers, and, along the scalloped kerbs, ribbons of yellow and orange marigolds rejoiced the expanse of grey-white gravel where weeds dared not appear.

A rose climbed up the wall of the house. This was a serious two-storey building that her husband, my grandfather, had built indulging in garrets, stairs and ample halls. From the terrace at the second floor, where my uncle lived with his family, the top of the magnolia was deceptively close, as the annoying pigeons that rose in short flights from the neighbour’s house, or the mountains in the distance. Behind the pyramidal shape of the tree and its lustrous evergreen leaves, the garden was a spontaneous meadow, a rectangle with fruit trees and two vegetable gardens separately cultivated by my aunt and my grandmother.

Under the magnolia, in balance between the gravel and the grass, there was a low bench made of stone and no flowers. These would have hindered the wide range of chairs, stools and deck-chairs that, above all in summer, were scattered under the generous shade of the tree. Chairs were dragged back and forth: they were gathered in the deepest shade when the rays shone relentlessly devouring shady contours, or spread under the lower external branches when a sudden breath of wind or frothy clouds cooled the air.

Soon after lunch, my grandmother sat under the magnolia with her book of prayers. The rosary beads flowed fast in her long hands without rings while she was absorbed in the holy words, her eyes closed. Then, she put away her prayers, put on her glasses and began to knit or sew pieces of clothing for her grandchildren. Sometimes, the basket at her feet was full of colourful balls of wool of different texture, the old sweaters she reused for large blankets that dropped from her crochet strip after strip. Old dresses and coats became, instead, soft slippers. She designed cardboard silhouettes around our feet, and, then, going up and down the external stair of the house, from the magnolia to a room with coloured window-panes at the first floor, she sewed with her sewing-machine the different fabrics, layer after layer, until the sole got the desired thickness. She finished the upper with elegant touches so that no pair was similar to another.

Late in the afternoon, she lingered under the magnolia waiting for my uncle who, back from work, used to stop there to talk about the news she had read in the newspaper. At sunset, she worked in her garden. She weeded and watered, tied the tomatoes, fought against potato-beetles and hungry butterflies, piling up the scraps in a compost heap where pumpkins flourished. There were tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, spinaches, salads, zucchini, onions, leeks, and cutting flowers. Dahlias, lilies, aster or gladiolus were intended for the cemetery, where she went every Sunday morning, her arms full of fresh flowers wrapped in old pages of newspaper. In the afternoon, she welcomed old relatives and friends offering tea and attention under the glossy leaves of the magnolia.

Clanswilliam Wild Flower Show - Clanwilliam, South Africa.

Flower shows thrive in spring all over the world. South Africa is no exception, and, from late August, the Cape Floristic Region offers many tempting initiatives to celebrate the beginning of springtime in the southern hemisphere.

Clanwilliam Wild Flower Show, for example, is a tradition that dates back to the 1940s. At the time, flower enthusiasts arranged simple pots full of wild flowers to decorate school and town halls in this small agricultural town along the Cape Namibia National Route, approximately 230 km from Cape Town. These spontaneous initiatives converged in an annual event with the creation, in 1971, of the Clanwilliam Wild Flower Association, focused on the protection and study of the local flora, and the choice of the Old Dutch Reformed Church as definitive venue. 

Inside the Blomkerk (the Flower Church), a neo-Gothic building completed in 1864, dark wooden beams stand out against white walls, and bright windows frame flowers arrangements that fill the nave with the richness and beauty of the local flora. An extremely varied topography, which includes the Cederberg Mountains, the banks of the Olifant River, and the nearby ocean, favours the growth of a wide variety of plants. They are part of the Fynbos vegetation, a type of vegetation characterized by small shrubs, mostly evergreen, associated with herbs, bulbs and perennials, that stretches along the southwestern coasts of South Africa, from Port Elisabeth to Clanwilliam. Typical Fynbos plants are Proteas, Ericas and Restios, but many other families are part of the mosaic of textures, colors and shapes that, between September and October, covers the Cape Floristic Region, the sixth, the smallest and the most diverse floral kingdom of the world.

In Clanwilliam, volunteers wisely take advantage of this diversity creating each year an original display choosing among the flowers those favoured by unpredictable elements. Last year, early and abundant rainfalls privileged the Renosterveld type vegetation, with carpets of daises and colonies of bulbs. The previous year, Karoo plants flourished in the dry valleys, succulents with fleshy leaves, shaded grey-green, and with a prevalence of yellow and white flowers. Few days before the beginning of the show, volunteers swarm with their secateurs in public and private reserves to pick flowers. Inside the church, these are arranged in a structure prepared early in the month with wooden crates, straw balls and sand, and, then, completed with moss and sods to return fragments of the surrounding landscape. In a separate room, different species are carefully labeled with their botanical and common names to satisfy visitors’ curiosity. This newly acquired botanical knowledge can be immediately tested exploring the nearby area. Ignoring the white graves of the first settlers in the churchyard and the lively stalls with food, crafts and local products, visitors can explore the botanical trails that wind through the Cederberg mountains with their unusual rock formations and spectacular rock paintings, heritage of the San people. Further botanical interest can be found in the Ramskop Natural Reserve, close to the town with views on the mountains and the Clanwilliam dam, popular for summer water sports. Following the footpaths you are immersed in the different landscapes of the region, up to Springbok, the capital of Namaqualand; the arid land that spring rains transform in an unforgettable carpet of flowers weaved with minute details.

Flower shows may offer you rare plants and inspired gardens, Clanwilliam Wild Flower Show offers you something different, namely the discovery of the strength and beauty of the spontaneous flora. An invitation for sophisticated gardeners to enjoy the refreshing vision of hundreds of flowers and rest.

Links:
For more information
www.clanwilliamflowerfestival.co.za

Photos:
TravelinaGarden

A Swallowtail (Papilio Machaon), Red Admiral (Vanessa Atalanta) and Other Insects With Shells And A Sprig Of Borage (Borago Officinalis) - Jan van Kessel the Elder.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.

In a sunny day of late spring, I would spread seashells on the floor looking for those shiny and mysterious shapes painted in this Flemish still-life dated around 1659. 

The author, Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626-79), lived in Antwerp where he was a distinguished flower painter member of the prestigious St. Luke’s Guild. Painting was a family tradition, his father being Hieronymus van Kessel, a portrait painter, and his mother, Paschaise Brueghel, the daughter of Jan Brueghel, famous for his still-life paintings of flowers. It was a dynasty of talented painters that, begun in the sixteenth century, would continue up to the first years of the eighteenth century.

Jan’s subjects include allegories, fables and landscapes, but his best compositions are those suggested by the collections inspired to natural history with flowers, butterflies, insects and shells. Art reflected the increasing interest in natural science, a study more and more based on direct observation and experiments rather than abstract theories, spurred by the introduction of new exotic specimens from the West and East Indies derived from the Dutch successful trades. Painters glorified the abundance of nature and the prosperity of the country with beautiful paintings whose subjects never withered, an important tool for scholars and valuable works of art. Still-life paintings, until then an exercise for beginners, turned into a refined and very competitive market divided into specialized niches according to the subjects. In the “vanitas” still-life, the passage of time and transience of life were remarked by skulls, bubbles and watches, the “banquet” still-life offered the image of sumptuous and luxurious tables that invited to celebrate, and the “floral” still-life exalted the fleeting beauty of flowers. 
Shells were often part of these compositions as rare and exotic specimens, as symbols of the sea that brought wealth to the country. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, seashells from the South Seas were expensive objects of desire for rich collectors, fascinated by their beauty and endless variety. Their purchase was considered an investment and a sign of distinction; specialized clubs thirved. Jan van Kessel included seashells in his paintings, often working on wood and copper, painting from nature or scientific texts, to create panels to decorate collectors’ cabinets. In this painting, a white background emphazises the individual specimens, represented with extreme attention to details, colours, shadows, and shapes. Butterflies, insects a blue flower of borage and shells: Tectus Conus, Conus Marmoreus, Strobus Fasliatus, Murex Rectirostris, Conus Recurvus and other shells.

In the evening, after a useless day of research, I would close my room and leave for the sea.

Photos:
A Swallowtail (Papilio machaon), a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) and other Insects with shells and a sprig of borage (Borago officinalis), Jan van Kessel Wikipedia commons;
TravelinaGarden.