When you stroll across the Pontine plain, with parallel roads and fields divided by canals - especially in summer time when heat and humidity prevails and the horizon is blurred,
and think of all those people that in the Fifteenth Century lost their lives here due to
malaria, the words of St Augustine come to mind. He wrote: ". man carries within him
his precariousness, testimony of sin and your desire (God) to resist the proud. Man is a small
part of Your (God's) creation, and wishes to celebrate Your (God's) praise. It is You that
arouse this desire in him, because you have created us for Yourself and our heart will not find
peace until it rests in You (God).
I believe that in every farmer, who in the last century worked
this land, there was something of St Augustine's thought, as found in his Confessions and handed
down through the centuries to us. Thousands died in last land reclamation , and only with the
resigned knowledge of being totally entrusted to God and His will were they able to accept risking their lives.
This is the territorial context within which the Cassa del Mezzogiorno aimed to reach Ninfa,
transforming and industrialising the area. At times the policy succeeded, at times not - so in parts
of the area today there are abandoned industries or ones struggling for survival. Here we find, we
ourselves unexpectedly in a dreamlike existence, exuding a romantic sense of death. The
garden of Ninfa was born in a city dead for centuries.
The surrounding countryside is bare and
harsh.: on one side, the Monti Lepini, arid and rocky, with Norma on high looking down
on the surrounding plain - and on the other, flat monotonus land.
As architect, I wonder what sense it makes to create a garden like this in such a terrain which
seems to reject it with every hour of the sun. Today the ''architect-philosopher" seeks to interpret
the soul of the place, to search for its essence., accepting the harshness and violence that a
terrain expresses. Its identity ideates and elaborates a 'new place'. Christian Norberg-Schulz
i n his Genius Loci analyses three cities, three places, three characters, three essenses: Rome,
Prague, Khartoum.
Each has its own "psychical implications"; he defines them as classical, romantic and cosmic.
We hardly feel the need, today, to resort to such definitions, but sometimes schematising
helps us to clarify our concepts.
When we stroll in this garden, among the ancient walls of an extinct town, we are immersed in
the desire of Gelasio Caetani who, between 1900 and 1930 began the restoration of Ninfa.
Then began work on the garden we admire today. The organising concept of the garden could
be considered as a link with the past, as nineteenth century, rather than contemporary to the
Futurists. More linked to a romantic ideal of existence than an active enterprising force then
in fashion.
IIn my creative work I often ask myself if it is wrong to indulge in our desires , our dreams,
instead of remaining tied to the forms of expression belonging to our own times.
We are
perforce children of our times, and our decisions depend on the world that surrounds us , which
influences us.
I maintain, however, that first of all we must seek intense emotion and then give it expressive
form. In my work I usually allow my instinct to guide me.
And so, here, I abandon myself to this garden , among streams and plants of various kinds. The
Ninfa estate extends over 114 acres, of which 7 have been transformed into gardens - within a
protected oasis of 1852 acres. In lean periods, springs supply between 700 and 2000 litres of
water every second - thanks to the construction of the dam supplying a lake of 1200 square
metres. Humidity reaches 85% and the temperature varies between 0° C in winter ( which is,
in fact, rare) and 36°C in summer. The Monti Lepini protect the area from cold winter winds.
These are the climatic conditions which have made possible the fusion in a unique space of so
many diverse species of vegetation. Today Ninfa is one of the most loved and appreciated
gardens in Italy. It seems pointless to describe all the plants in the gardens. Ninfa is, I believe,
to be appreciated in its entirety, in its continuous changes, in the bossoming of one flower and
the dying of another. In the moving experience of seeing nature overwhelm the results of
human endeavours which deteriorate with time, in the discovery of a fresco on masonry overhung
with ivy. Ninfa is our past and the is the present of every one of us. One look beyond the
hedge, we decide not to go beyond. We can never see beyond, the universe remains closed in,
by the vague bounderies of nature.
