Radicepura Garden Festival, 4th Edition - “Dolce Castanea”

Radicepura, Giarre (CT), Sicily, Italy | 2023

Theophrastus, the Greek ‘father of botany’ called chestnut the “Dios balanos” or “God’s acorn.” Dolce Castagna is a love story, an allegory inspired by the traditions and symbologies of the One Hundred Horse chestnut and its symbiotic relationship to “a muntagna”, the mountain that embraces its territory all the way to the sea. Maternal guardians, both nurturing and with unrelenting character, Idda and Dolce Castagna remain a fundamental part of Sicilian culture. In this garden, both represent the beauty and strength of nature before which man must always bow.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.” (William Blake)

The chestnut, a big tree with a big imagination, remains precariously perched on the edges of Idda; benefiting from the life the volcano breathes into it, but always with due attention to its unpredictability. Imagine the bounty that such a tree has produced throughout its life; a bounty and structure that transcends even the most royal of homages and their retinue. Dolce Castagna is presented here alongside Idda as a symbol of fertility, a metaphor for life, and together as objects of worship of the regenerative power of nature. Appearing to undergo a vegetative propagation, the garden seeks to weave together the richness and the fertility of the tree, the soil, and the industriousness of man.