Garden_Villa_Romana_Buch_klein

NON
GARDEN
BOOK
VILLA
ROMANA

14 Garden Memories Kasia Fudakowski
9
1. Windows vibrating with the
sound of Via Senese.
2. Chickens, chicken, and then no
chicken. (Feathers found all
the way to San Gaggio 3)
3. Compost via the bamboo
labyrinth.
4. Agave guards.
5. Bay leaves for artichokes.
6. Sage to keep the ghosts
at bay.
7. Pink and white flowers with
poisonous milk for guests.
8. Countless bamboo ambitions.
Ladder, chair, fishing rod,
table, tripod, bouquet, bed,
mosquito net holder, home.
9. Sanding wood genitalia around
the back. Clouds of Oak.
Puddles of Oak.
10. Plum jam in the heat of the
harvest never not melted.
11. Olive netting, raking, hauling,
transporting, pressing, and
ultimate drizzling pride.
12. Hairy tongued Kaki, never made
it to the other side of unripe.
13. Unused Boboli Garden pass, the
opulence of autumn.
14. Bring me some Sage from the
garden next time you come.

Sitting with three cats
in a circle
Nine Budde 10
Stürmische Nacht und Vollmond. Beim
Wandern durch den Garten treffe
ich auf die drei Katzen. Sie sitzen
im hinteren Teil des Gartens in
gleichen Abständen zueinander.
Ich setze mich ihnen in grösserer
Entfernung gegenüber. So bilden
wir gemeinsam einen länglichen
Kreis. Lange sitzen wir so da in
stiller Konzentration und
gegenseitiger Betrachtung, während
die Wolken über den Himmel rasen
und der Garten rauscht.

My Life as a Palmtree
Dyptich bestehend aus einer auf
dem Dachboden der Villa Romana
gefundenen s/w Fotografie von 1975,
dem Geburtsjahr von Nine Budde, und
einer aktualisierten s/w Fotografie
von 2012.

Heide Hinrichs 33
“Earth is made porous. Earth heeds.
Inward. Inception in darkness. In
the blue-black body commences
lument. Like firefly, a slow rhythme
relume to yet another and another
opening.”
Dictee, Theresa Hak Kung Cha, Tanam
Press, New York, 1982, page 160
Diese Erde ist gelb-tonig. Es
leuchtet in dem gelben Körper. Die
Larve glüht golden. Ich störe die
Erde, der Körper glüht. Mit den
Fingern, der Hand berühre ich
die Brocken. Glühwürmchen bewegen
sich unsichtbar durch den Körper,
Tage später fliegen fire flies über
dem Boden, in der Luft.

Benjamin Yavuzsoy 34
Ich war ausgezeichnet auf
Öffentlichkeit vorbereitet: Ich
habe in der Wohnung im Erdgeschoss
gewohnt, Tür an Tür mit dem großen
Ausstellungsraum Giardino.
Bevor ich die Feste der Villa
besucht habe, bin ich oft durch
mein Küchenfenster in den Garten
hinausgestiegen, sobald ich
unbekannte Stimmen aus dem Flur in
meiner Küche hören konnte.
Ich lief langsam durch den
Bambuswald oder entlang des kleinen
umzäunten Gemüsegartens von Ala
und Victor und hatte das Bedürfnis,
den Bereich mit den Tieren der
Brüder zu besuchen. Die Brüder
besaßen indische weiße Pfautauben,
die auf einem hohen Sitz aus Holz
ihren Platz hatten. Sie waren nicht
an Menschen gewöhnt und
unterbrachen ihr Putzritual, sobald
ich mich ihnen näherte. Ich
beobachtete sie lange. Sie waren
irgendwie unerwartet. Ihr zartes
Gefieder war angesichts von
Vernachlässigung mit Schmutz und
Staub durchsetzt. Zu ihren Füßen
sprangen eingesperrte Kaninchen
gegen die Wände der kleinen
Holzställe. Drei alte Hühner
durften hingegen frei umherlaufen.
Irgendwann waren die Brüder
verschwunden. Sie hinterließen der
Villa die Pfautauben und die drei
alten Hühner.
Ich bin im Garten im Olivenhain
und zwischen den Obstbäumen
spazieren gegangen, bevor ich die
Eröffnungen besuchen konnte, damit
ich wie die Gäste, die von
außerhalb gekommen waren, durch den
Haupteingang die Ausstellungen
betreten konnte und nicht wie der
Künstler aus der Villa.
Zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt habe
ich von Angelika erfahren, dass
einer der zwei Brüder ein
ehemaliger Gärtner im
Kunsthistorischen Institut war und
der andere ein Elektriker. Ihre
Anwesenheit führte zurück auf den
ehemaligen Direktor der Villa. Die
beiden Männer durften fast den
gesamten Garten nutzen und mussten
als Gegenleistung ein- bis zweimal
im Jahr die große Wiese sensen.
Schon bald nach ihrer Abwesenheit
starben die weißen Pfautauben, weil
sie vermutlich von Raubwild
gerissen wurden. Weil die drei
Hühner schon so alt waren, legten
sie keine Eier mehr. Ein Huhn starb
eines natürlichen Todes im
Bambuswald. Die anderen beiden
bekamen den Namen Gerda und lebten
weiter, bis auch sie von Raubwild
getötet wurden. Nach ihnen gab es
einen neuen Versuch, Tauben und
Hühner zu beherbergen, aber auch
diese lebten nur sehr kurz oder
wurden bald von anderen Tieren
gerissen. Seitdem fehlen die Tiere
der Villa.

Bank unterm Olivenbaum Viron Erol Vert 53
Hoch ins Blaue, Weite, aus dunkelster Seele
sprießen steinern erdfarbene Gedanken.
Hand in Hand gleiten sie im Wind, tänzeln mit den ewigen Riesen.
Stehen tun diese wie grüne Zinnsoldaten,
schwingend und mahnend ihre langen Zipfelmützen.
Tragen uns beide im Takt ihrer Lieder, aus dem Tiefsten,
ihr Inneres hervor.
Lange Schatten sind gleitende Brücken, schützende Grenzen,
zarte verbindende Linien um Stämme, Bäume, Menschen.
Wie alte und vertraute Freundschaftsbande
legen sie sich fest um uns herum.
Dazu im hölzernen Takt der ewigen Rinden
führen Sie flimmernd ihren Tanz der Gezeiten uns vor.
Farben bebend und zitternd, dazu wachsen stetig aus dem Licht
die heißen Schatten.
Klappern, klatschen, summen und pfeifen,
unsichtbare, mir mythische Reusenwesen.
Fangen sie die ewigen Seelenfragen, Traumweben gleich,
still im satten Geäst des Hains empor.
Durch die dichten Gräser blicken Düfte, Farben, Leben, Tod
aus und in den Schoss der satten Erde hinein.
Laufe auf der hohen Wiese, hoch der Blick, hoch mein Geist,
auf die alte, in der Tiefe, sich siedende Metropole.
Soll der Garten – Eden sein,
ist die Stadt in der Ferne das ewige Meer,
ihrer beiden Geschichten die üppigen Früchte.

Moving around in a
time space
69
Angelika Stepken
The garden of the Villa Romana
determines the life of both the
individual and the institution. But
it can in no way be taken for
granted. What is a garden, anyway?
And what is a garden that is lived
and experienced by a large number
of ever-changing guests? How public
is the garden of an artists’ house,
and is a house with a garden a
privilege? Or is it a culturalhistorical
relic that falls under
private law and evokes an array of
projection and identification—
everything from paradise to
Renaissance villas and on to urban
gardening? How does one use a
garden, when almost all of its
users alternate on a regular basis
due to the everyday reality of an
artists’ residency house? How does
one move in a garden that allows
for ample movement? What does one
see in a garden—from a variety of
perspectives, from near and far,
over time? What experiences, what
types of knowledge give rise to a
garden? And can a garden become a
subject of discussion?
These were the first questions
we posed in February of 2008. The
Villa had just been freshly
restored, and the garden was a wild
maze of hedges towering overhead,
with many blind alleys, utilitarian
evidence impossible to interpret,
and two tenants who, apart from the
pseudo-Tuscan hedge behind the main
building and the broad grassy field,
laid claim to everything else for
their vegetable farm, rabbit and
chicken breeding, and piles of
hoarded materials. On a cold
weekend in February of 2008, a
group of art historians, artists,
and landscape architects met at the
Villa to have a look around the
garden of the Villa Romana and
formulate questions. This in itself
was already significant: finding
words to talk about a garden, this
garden. How does it look, how does
it present itself, and what does it
stand in the way of? Could it take
on a completely different
appearance? Could it be opened up
to the public, could it grow beyond
itself? What are the historical and
present-day connections between
contemporary art, artists, and
gardens? It was a matter of placing
the garden of the Villa Romana in
context, one that was initially
discursive.
The garden of the Villa Romana
is not a historical garden, as one
tends to assume in Italy of every
bit of wall or hedge. In
photographs from the early
twentieth century, when the artist
Max Klinger purchased the house and
property for the newly founded
Villa Romana Association, one can
see the elevated area in front of
the façade, unchanged to this day,
with a small fountain at the
center. There were a number of
trees facing the street, the Via
Senese, yet the larger part of the
property was not a garden at all,
but rather a large expanse of open
field. Former Villa Romana fellows
testify to this being the case into
the 1960s. It was only from the
’70s to the ’90s, under the aegis
of former director Joachim
Burmeister, that the hedges were
planted, as were the fruit and
olive trees and the cypresses,
which today tower over the Villa
building. The garden was divided
into several zones, with one
directly behind the house, enclosed
by laurel hedges and with a
magnolia at the center, and behind
it, at a lower level, the orchard.
Opposite and parallel to this is
the olive grove, and towards the
south is the great field. The entire
garden is enclosed by a wall and
surrounded on three sides for the
most part by neighboring
residential buildings. On one of
the long sides, it borders directly
on the Via Senese, today an
arterial road leading to the Romebound
highway and a thruway to
Siena. Day and night, the
automobile traffic sets the garden’s
rhythm. Not to be forgotten: the
Villa Romana is situated on a hill
that stretches from the Porta
Romana to a bit farther behind the
Villa and leads to the former
cloister of San Gaggio. This means
that the garden has an irregular
sloping topography that at its
highest point opens onto views of
the city, the cathedral dome, and
the Campanile, as well as the hills
of Fiesole and Settignano facing
opposite.
Today, visitors entering the
garden of the Villa Romana assume
that it’s always looked this way.
This could be due to a more general
uncritical perception of gardens,
but in this case, it’s the effect
of the work of atelier le balto.
Because today, one can “read” the
garden if one wishes to, one can
see and understand, if one wishes
to, what exists in relation to
what, and how. For atelier le
balto, their concept of
reinterpreting the garden was less
about order than about
relationships: relationships
between what grows and what people
do or have done or plan to do—and
vice versa. The first thing the
three landscape architects did in
2009 was to set the main building
of the Villa in relation to the
land behind it. It was a
relationship that did not
previously exist; before,
everything had been fenced off and
separated. atelier le balto
mirrored the high-ceilinged,
80-square-meter so-called “Garden
Hall” (today an exhibition space)
by creating a large pebble-covered
area around the magnolia nine by
nine meters in size, a kind of
empty platform. They then cut back
the surrounding hedges on three
sides to the height of the Garden
Hall. These were cut horizontally,
in other words, the height of the
exhibition space is continued into
the top edge of the hedges (which
are then a bit higher or lower). In
this way, the slope was clearly
addressed. The random vegetation in
this zone of box trees, roses, and
yucca palms was cleared away, the
branches of the cypresses and the
magnolia trimmed to shoulder
height, the “painterly” growth
along the ground around the palms
removed, the little terracotta dogs
and sphinxes moved to another area,
the “Lapidarium.” The effect was
huge. The overall atmosphere of the
zone became light and airy, while
the pebbled area became a stage for
the interplay of light and shadows
cast by the plants and visitors.
Today, standing before this zone,
you can feel yourself physically in
relation to what is before you. The
space is open to shoulder height.
Thus, the visitor is “invited” to
become a potential actor in this
garden—even if he or she merely
steps out the door to have a look
at it. Because the garden is, of
course, per se a human invention.
The work atelier le balto
undertook in the Villa Romana
garden spanned many years. Because
there was so much to be done, and
because the next steps had to be
figured out each time funding had
been secured, this process-based
type of work meant there was ample
time to pore over the decisions.
Over the years, many, many staff
members and interns have
accompanied atelier le balto’s team
of three from Le Havre and Berlin
to Florence and rolled up their
sleeves in active cooperation.
atelier le balto calls this
procedure “garden art in action.”
The two tenants left the garden in

70 Mistakes are not mistakes,
71
and nothing is final
atelier le balto
2009, after which atelier le balto
invented the “Semaine de jardin,”
which was repeated twice over the
following years: for one week,
dozens of masters students in
landscape architecture from
Versailles, Stuttgart, Alghero,
Milan, Rome, and Florence, as well
as baubotanik practitioners,
philosophers, architects, cooks,
and artists were invited to the
Villa Romana. The students camped
out in the garden. Practical
gardening work in the large group
alternated with theoretical
seminars, public podium
discussions, conceptual exercises,
and artistic evening events. Day
trips to the Florence city center
(with Stefan Werrer) and to Tuscan
park grounds (with Anna Lambertini)
added depth to the urban and
historical context. These were
weeks during which the garden
became material and, on many
levels, a protagonist, while the
communication with and over the
garden encompassed many different
groups of participants. It became a
public site of transformation, of
an exchange of knowledge, and of
community life and experience.
The team of atelier le balto—Marc
Pouzol, Veronique Faucheur, and
Marc Vatinel—brings together
different skills: Marc V. climbs
the trees and knows how to cut
them; Marc P. draws wonderful
sketches in which spaces, paths,
and light reflect one another, and
he loves the relief and substance
of the ground; Veronique is perhaps
the one who brings her dance
training to the job, which imagines
the body’s movements through
vegetation. What the three have in
common is a way of working that
does not follow any strict plan,
but is rather a process that is
both conceptual and physical.
Action and thought interlock; it’s
about understanding what they want
and are able to achieve. The path
around the garden, for instance,
came about as a path along the
garden’s outer perimeter; it is a
way of circumventing it, almost
from the outside. What they have in
common is an inclination to
playfulness and anarchy. The one
olive tree in the large field became
a source of shade, shaped into a
sun umbrella using a bamboo
framework that harbors a bed in the
crown to lie down and gaze up at
the sky. The great wild laurel was
trimmed like a “Swiss army knife”—
it exhibits a different profile from
each side—while its interior offers
room for a tree house made from
bamboo rods: a platform to view the
city and garden, a shady rendezvous
for adventurers. Other olive trees
along the middle axis were trimmed
cubically, an affront to Tuscan
convention. Nor is the large olive
grove trimmed in orthodox Tuscan
tradition. Its middle branches are
higher than is practical for
harvesting the olives, and they
hang lower than usual on the sides.
The cut, repeated each year,
creates cathedral-like space
“ships” among the rows of trees.
There are endless details that
should be listed here: the clay
observation terrace in the far
corner of the garden; a resonating
ground made from terracotta shards;
a path of irises along the wall to
the neighbors above; a bamboo
forest furnished with a bamboo rug;
cypresses whose treetops are cut in
a mannerist style… but there were
also major decisions that took a
long time to make: when the hedges
to the right and left of the boccia
alley were trimmed, views suddenly
emerged with the power of
revelations that, in steps,
rhythmically connected the olive
grove above with the lower zone
behind the house, something that
would have been unimaginable
before. And finally, when the hedge
facing the building’s façade was
trimmed by a meter and a half, the
entrance to the building, formerly
like a kind of tunnel, widened to
reveal a view of the historical
garden zone further up, in front of
the limonaia. Dance-like leaps of
spaces in space.
In contrast to a building, a
garden is never finished. It grows,
and grows, and overruns every
concept. There are no professional
gardeners at the Villa Romana. The
custodian, Victor Cebotaru, takes
care of everything year-round and
in every kind of weather: the
immense garden, a sizeable
building, repairs, the numerous
exhibitions that have to be
installed and taken down again, the
many events. He also cultivates a
small piece of the garden for his
family’s use. A garden requires
sustained cultivation and can be
continuously transformed. The users
of the garden, the fellows and the
Villa’s other residents and guests,
normally do not get involved,
except at the olive harvest, when
it’s not raining. Some of the
artists with children plant carrots
for a season. Most of all, however,
the garden is a protected, semipublic
space for the artists living
in the house, a kind of extension
of their studios. Working and
living for ten months at the Villa
Romana in Florence is an
exceptional state for the fellows.
And for nearly all of them, the
garden is also an exceptional
state, because they otherwise live
in major cities. For some, the
garden becomes a place of memory,
sometimes of a grandfather’s garden
in Iran, a parents’ garden in
Turkey. Some of the artists
cultivate their rituals here, take
morning walks through the olive
grove, spend hot afternoons beneath
the tree umbrella, have evening
barbecues next to the wild laurel,
retreat to a hidden corner with a
book. Some create temporary
interventions with artistic
projects, sound-based and other
sculptures, a subterranean guest
bed with a glass roof, a summer bar
of glazed ceramics, a long flight
tunnel for canaries the artist
either brought or bred on site.
Others hang their pictures in the
hedges or construct improvised
summer homes for their visiting
gallery dealers.
How can a garden be portrayed
in a book? A garden is neither
static nor flat; it appears in
changing light, changing seasons.
It has a macrovolume and millions
upon millions of microvolumes and
surfaces. With this publication, we
aim not to produce a coffee table
book, although the garden premises
and vegetation would easily lend
themselves to this. We’re showing
views of the transformative work
that is the garden, we’re showing
views of the garden in which the
camera ostensibly leaves it alone.
Yet each time the camera shutter is
released, the garden is already
different. We aim to visualize some
of the relationships within the
garden discussed here. We’re
showing it as it progresses through
the seasons, and over a period of
ten years. We’re showing it from
the perspective of the Villa Romana
fellows, who experience, perceive,
and use it each year from February
to November. We’re showing the
garden as a space for movement and
observation, action and
contemplation, encounter and
interpretation. It is a space that
is open-ended in time, despite its
topographical boundaries.
Working in long-term ways allows us
to act, to let nature react, then
to act again. As the landscapers
that we are, we have the
opportunity here to ourselves shape
the materials that make up the
garden, essentially plants, like
plastic artists who transform their
favorite materials: wood, stone,
steel, glass, images, colors...
NON Book Garden is not a
manifesto. Rather, it is a sharing
of moments. Seizing the opportunity
to speak about time. A little about
the weather but above all about the
time that passes. For the past ten
years, we have been granted the
time of an annual week to
rediscover the evident aesthetics
of the garden each year: those of
the pruning residues, amassed in
the shape of a hedge or a carpet,
of the transformation of this shape
over time; those of the bamboo
culms piled high, resembling a pack
of mikado sticks thrown away just
then; of the freshly raked gravel
or of an ivy stem expertly removed
from a tree trunk. Sharing the
aesthetics of these fleeting
moments.
Wanting to create a map of the
garden. But the map of which
garden? The one of bounded spaces,
the one of revealed places, the one
of erased places. The one of the
successive views when you walk down
the slope, the one of the numerous
paths, and the one of the routes
that overlap at the points of view.
The map of the garden that I
perceive and of the one that you
perceive. The map of the garden as
the neighbor sees it. The map of
the garden explored by a Florentine
visitor and the one gardened by a
Berliner. The map of the garden of
an artist in residence, at the
beginning and the end of his stay.
Outlining the garden of a specific
time, of one of the 40 weeks
allotted to artists in residence or
of a winter month when the light is
softer.
Every year, thinning the
bamboo forest, sometimes slightly,
sometimes drastically. Marking the
culms that have survived with a
small orange line, drawing these
lines all at the same level by
using the floor of the villa’s
living room as a reference. The
following year, the young culms
stand out, because they do not have
the orange mark. After ten years,
two thirds of the bamboo grove’s
population has been renewed.
The pleasure of cutting the bamboo
culm at its base, using the right
hand, which is supported by the
left hand to lighten the kerf, then
catching the culm in its fall and
sliding it in the hand to the point
of balance, the point where it
becomes light. The dance of
effortless transport up to the
place where it is peeled. Stripping
it of its branches, which resemble
fish bones, in order to transform it
into building material.
Using the bamboo culms to make
all sorts of objects or small
constructions: a simple landmark in
the garden, a stake for a young
tree, a straw mat, an arbor for the
terrace at the very top of the
villa, a platform, suspended
between the trunks of the laurels,
which stand in the center of the
garden grouped around the tool
shed—a platform floating above the
shed’s roof.
Removing the many dead,
weakened branches, which impair the
twisted, broken, or snarled trees.
Bundling them. The bundles are an
orderly tangle of branches, all
laid out in the same direction, in
order to place them easily in a
confined space, which often becomes
longer but not wider. In this way,
creating lines that delimit or
create new spaces. Landscaping the
garden on a one-to-one scale with
the bundles: parallel lines
covering a nine-by-nine-meter
square at the very top left of the
campo, a border between the orchard
and the vegetable garden, a line
highlighting the bottom of the
slope, four lines joining to form a
large rectangle in the orchard. The
original pattern for planting the
fruit trees is subordinated. The
bundles become the soil for new
plantings, small trees and shrubs,
which bear berries and small fruits
for humans and birds.
The upper terrace is built
with terracotta fragments. Those of
the many terracotta objects
scattered throughout the garden.
They were broken and leveled like
gravel on a nine-by-nine-meter
square. It is a terrace that you
reach after climbing the hill,
which is located in the upper right
corner of the campo and from which
you can see the Dome. About twelve
elms stood behind this terrace,
along the walls, in the corner.
They certainly had not been
planted. They looked like a tribe.
They almost formed a thicket when
they were struck by graphiosis, a
fungal disease. Within a month,
they were all dead and were felled
a few weeks later. The young mimosa
has disappeared in the process. The
place looks naked. The neighbors
enjoy the view—now unobstructed—of
the Dome. The place is waiting.
Naming is important. The
“Swiss Army Knife,” for, located in
the center of the garden, each side
of the cluster of large laurels
offers a precise use: the welcome
area of the fountain to the south,
barbecue and aperitif to the west,
storage to the north, entrance to
the shed to the east, this tool
shed hidden in the middle of the
cluster of laurels, remaining
perfectly invisible. The “poet’s
walk,” because it accompanies the
long wall on the west side of the
garden. You walk along it without
worrying about where you step.
There you can think calmly, without
the risk of twisting your ankle or
getting scratched by a branch. The
“Giardino vecchio,” since it would
have been built at the same time as
the Villa and its limonaia, at the
end of the nineteenth century, and
its more recent counterpart, on the
other side of the Villa, the
“Giardino nuovo,” which dates from
the second half of the twentieth
century. The “Thomas Garden,” named
after an apprentice gardener. Who
notices it? It is only four years
old and needs attention. At the
bottom of the wall, facing
southeast, in full midday sun, it
is planted with exotic species:
Asparagus plumosus, Agave
americana, Yucca rostrata,
Grevillea rosmarinifolia—all of
these gardening efforts. “The olive
tree parasol,” in the center of the
campo, to seek the shade of its
foliage at noon or to contemplate
the stars in a summer sky on the
bamboo bed arranged on its top.
The garden does not care about
all these ideas about it. It
continues on its way, while we have
returned to other countries, other
gardens. It is difficult to think
clearly about the garden of the
Villa Romana when you are far away.
Only a few notions arise from time
to time: going to see the irises
bloom, looking out for the bamboo
shoots when they emerge from the
ground, missing the dark green that
now, in the middle of summer,
reigns over the garden. Going to
see if the young chestnut and holm
oaks planted in autumn are
withstanding the drought, hanging
up their stakes and replenishing
their mulch. Seeing the garden
teeming with artists and visitors
during Open Studio.

72
Index of artists’
works/contributions
Imprint
When we return the following year, the void with acanthus seeds. The
the rose bush has disappeared, and following year, the wounds from the
one of the holm oaks has had its pruning have disappeared, and the
top cut off... After a few years, acanthi seem proud to be there.
the bundles have collapsed, and They have even multiplied. Vistas,
young trees growing from seeds that links, thresholds, passages appear
landed in their midst show their over the course of the work, over
fragile peaks. A row of elms nearly the years. The view from the
two meters high has emerged from terrace at the top of the Villa,
the ground, almost without our through the cluster of laurel trees
knowledge, in ten years, at the of the “Swiss Army Knife,” to the
very top of the campo. Every three olive grove located even further
years, the laurel hedge in the down. The view from the Giardino
living room-garden has once again vecchio, over the laurel hedges,
grown too high. The string line crossing the rose garden and its
must be drawn again, using the floor gloriette, bouncing off the first
of the Villa‘s living room as a rows of the olive grove to end on
height reference. Every year, the large pine tree borrowed from
taking pleasure in removing the old the neighbor. The 360° view, from
palm fronds from the trunks of the inside the cluster of laurels, in
palm trees.
the center of the garden, first to
For ten years, practicing the the distant city, and, closer,
trade on a one-to-one scale
turning to the right, successively,
involves, allows, and obligates you the orchard, the living roomterrace
punctuated by its eight
to take time. To plan, to let
yourself be surprised, to wait, not cypresses framing the magnolia with
to wait, to do, to let happen, then large leaves, the garden with three
do again. All actions are crucial. cypress trees—Quattrocento style—
Some more than others. 2010: and lilacs from India
removing the lower branches of the (Lagerstroemia, commonly known as
large magnolia and the eight crape myrtle), the rose garden and
cypress trees that demarcate the its gloriette, the campo and its
access to the ring surrounding the olive tree-parasol, then the frame
foot of the magnolia. Removing the of the sixty olive trees.
terracotta leaves that mark this
Ten years ago, the garden was
ring and feeling like you are divided. This year (2019), the two
freeing the foot of the magnolia, old box trees in the corner of the
like untying a shoe that has become Villa have been so attacked by
too small. Thinking about enlarging moths (Cydalima perspectalis or the
the gravel area, this small gravel box tree moth) that we dare to cut
with flat stones, about 15mm in them. They are carved into a
diameter, light gray, almost offwhite,
pleasant to weigh in the kind of raised, floating,
strange shape, together creating a
palm, stones that the French call supernatural parallelepiped. Since
“mignonette.” Creating this larger the two trunks are located at the
gravel area of nine-by-nine-meter foot of a large staircase
next time, that is, the following connecting the lower part to the
year. Ordering the same gravel. upper part of the garden, removing
Renting the large mulcher regularly them erases the two vertical dark
in order to transform the thousands lines and the dark mass of its
of branches into mulch, to enhance floating volume. The clear
the layer of humus and make this horizontal line created by the two
very heavy clay soil a little more wide steps is highlighted. The
welcoming.
passage is bright. The cut is like
At first, the garden is
a deep breath at nightfall. The
perceived as wounded and
garden of the Villa Romana has lost
fragmented. The feeling of crossing the last element that divided it.
many isolated and unrelated spaces At dawn the next day, it is one. I
fades over the years. Opening have my coffee on the roof of the
vistas, enlarging passageways, Villa. Someone is moving about in
affirming thresholds, creating the garden, taking a walk; he/she
spaces and places, suggesting waves to me.
links. Taking time, going slowly,
so as sometimes to engage in more
violent actions, such as reducing
the laurel hedge that delimits the
Giardino vecchio along its entire
length (30m) by half its height
(3m) and width (4m). Daring to fill
Nine Budde (2012)
Dingum (2012)
Kasia Fudakowski (2017)
Petrit Halilaj and
Alvaro Urban (2014)
Heide Hinrichs (2013)
Thomas Kilpper (2011)
Christian Naujoks (2018)
Judith Raum (2015)
Sophie Reinhold (2018)
Kai Schiemenz (2008)
Eske Schlüters (2009)
Farkhondeh Shahroudi (2017)
Viron Erol Vert (2018)
Stefan Vogel (2017)
Nico Joana Weber (2017)
Clemens von Wedemeyer (2008)
Benjamin Yavuzsoy (2009)
10, 26, 27
21, 36
9
7, 18, 52, 63
33
42
67
55
60, 61
37 (detail)
2, 35
54
30, 53
62
29
57
34
Published by
Villa Romana, Florence
Editors:
Angelika Stepken
atelier le balto
Photographers:
atelier le balto
Nine Budde
Marie Joubert
Yann Monel
Henrike Pilz
Judith Raum
Sophie Reinhold
Eske Schlüters
Hannes Schmidt/Dingum
Viron Erol Vert
Nico Joana Weber
Clemens von Wedemeyer
Villa Romana Archive
Sketches pages 74–84:
atelier le balto
Translations:
Andrea Scrima (German–English)
Naomi Shulman (French–English)
Design:
NODE Berlin Oslo
Print:
ruksaldruck Berlin
Distribution:
viceversabooks.com
ISBN 978-3-00-063263-1
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
for Nico Joana Weber
© Villa Romana, authors, artists
and photographers
www.villaromana.org