During his lessons, landscape architect and botanist Noel Kingsbury invites students to lower themselves to a "rabbit's eye view." By observing plants from the perspective of a small wild animal, one discovers the backstage of the garden: where latent buds peek out and creeping stems take root, one understands "how plant communities work" and can intuit their lines of development in advance. It is in this invitation to look at the plant not only from above - metaphorically and not - that the spirit of the project lies: the visitor has the opportunity to descend below ground level and take a furtive glance not only at the details of the cauline system, but also at the root system, which is both the subconscious of the emerged landscape (which motivates the 'public' behavior of plant society) and the protagonist of a landscape in its own right, rich in unpublished botanical designs and - as soil ecology teaches us - hidden stories of interaction between flora and fauna. A flowerbed where different categories of plants (trees, shrubs, perennial and annual herbaceous plants...) and therefore different root systems (taproots, fasciculated, branched, rhizomatous, bulbous...) intertwine, is divided in half by a trench in which, through atypical 'peepholes', the curiosity to see what lies beneath the carpet of aerial vegetation is satisfied. The evolution of the above will correspond to that of the below: the landscapes framed by the windows will gradually be traversed by new paths depending on whether conditions favor the generous superficial exploration of the roots of a young tree, the dense scattering of taproot annuals, or the solid advance of a phalanx of fleshy rhizomes.

SCENDERE is a garden where plants are considered in their entirety: not only for what they want to show, but also for what kryptesthai philei ( “loves to hide”); and where the observer discovers himself to be a ‘small animal’ stimulated by his most playful instinct: that of revealing what is hidden.

THE TEAM

Marta Prosello, Sofia Ronchini, Andrea D’Ascola

https://www.radicepurafestival.com/il-giardino-delle-piante/

Holm oak

Formosan lily

Ammobium alatum
Moraea iridioides
Bulbine frutescens ‘Hallmark’
Chrysopogon gryllus
Plectranthus neochilus
Bouteloua gracilis
Melinis nerviglumis
Glycirrhiza glabra
Clorophytum saundersiae
Acidanthera bicolor ‘Murielae’
Daucus carota

Cypress spurge

Purple fennel

Agave attenuata

German iris

Bulbine frutescens