A garden for the city: plants, flowers and aromas of ancient Rome, directed to the recovery and re-integration into society of adolescents and teenagers under penal detention. This, concretely, is the first step taken in the grounds of a museum. The Museo della Civiltà Romana, for specific didactic and cultural reasons, was chosen as the most suitable place for hosting the initiative.
The steps to recover deviant juvenilles in the ambit of the museum have been to date few and discontinuous. This initiative is not only the first innovative experience in a re-educative process aimed also at the prevention of ambiental discomfort, but also a means for sensibilising institutions and public opinion to problems of youth.
Very often detachment from the ambience, lack of interest, and loss of self-esteem, are causes of profound disorientation of the young, along with loss of values and points of reference.
Lillo di Mauro, responsible of the justice sector of the Cooperativa Cecilia, has proposed, as part of the operative plan, this project for the re-construction of a garden of ancient Rome. It has involved boys in training and work in the laboratory.
The aim was renewal, through a stimulous to socialisation and group work, an interrupted link with the ambience, so as to re-insert the young in the social fabric, make them feel productive and useful to society.
An activity, then, with the aim of grafting an educational and relational process where the young, having an active role, can demostrate their potentialities and interests, and appreciate the value of the work in life and society .
The choice of re-constructing a Roman garden been particularly effective, in guiding boys , through the knowledge of history, art, and nature, to a discovery of the historical roots of our civilisation.
The link with the past, in fact, is of fundamental importance not only, for the recovery of cultural roots of the individual, but also for the formation and consolidation of the personality.
The awareness of realising in a creative way something which is connected with society and useful to a vast public, certainly promotes a sense of belonging and self esteem.
The garden re-constructed by the boys is also an important step towards appreciating the Museo della Civiltà Romana. This has acquired, through this initiative, a new didactic sector for visiters: certain things are exhibited which otherwise would not have been visible.
The Garden project
The project for reconstructing the garden was finalised with the realisation of a coherent whole with a planned use of space, inspired mainly by ancient models of the Vesuvian Altar of the hortus conclusus.
Different vegetable species have been distributed in such a way as to obtain a system as faithful as possible to the inspiring models. The garden is articulated with geometrical cadences with bamboo fencing , with parts converging on the centre, where a bronze statue of the Emperor Septimus Severus stands, irremovable, in place of an ornamental sculpture. The representations on the Pompeian frescoes and the House of Lidia on the Palatine Hill have been founts of inspiration for scenography of the garden both for the choice of furnishings oscilla, vases, statues, vases and tables in marble and vegetable ornaments festoons in laurel and fencing.
The gardening laboratory
The minute representations of frescoes with particular reference to those of the
House of Lidia on tha Palatine and the villas at Pompei, not to mention numerous paleobotanic discoveries, have made possible through a careful analysis, the choice of plants and flowers most in use in ancient gardens. Ivy, laurel and oleander are some of the most common. The garden tends to be independent of the changing seasons, using evergreens.
For Martial , myrtle, box, and laurel were the characteristic plants of ornamental gardens, but also the plane and acanthus and in general all the plants that for their abbundant foliage could form a background to landscape gardeners' compositions.
Some plants, like the box, cypress, ilex, and oak, had, besides different shapes. Between 1 B.C., and I A.D., a specialised figure, the toparius, was imposed on this figurative art, which, on a project elaborated by him, both for choice of plants , and for ornamental arrangement, has a scenpgraphic function, with epic representations of battle or hunting.
The colour effect of the garden was supplied by a variety of flowers, narcisus, roses, gladioli, violets,pimpinelle, lilies, bordered by bamboo plants.
The water was very important for the life itself of the garden; it collected in capacious cisterns or basins positioned on higher terrain. They were also used in complex irrigation systems, so as to arrive, in the gardens of the rich suburban villas, to construct real private acquaducts.
