This may look like it just another lawn—a lawn that could be just about anywhere in the world for that matter—but it might come as a surprise that this particular patch of grass is actually growing on a wall.
As you walk (or drive, or take a bus) along the tree-lined & traffic-busy Viale Giovane Italia, at first you may notice that what appears to be someone's garden is spilling over the top of its wall. But as you draw closer, rectangles of varying shades & textures of green, not so random after all, begin to distinguish themselves.
As you come directly upon the tableaux of green, you will probably find yourself stopping to look skyward, and marveling at the arrangement of grass, herbs, ivy & other plants bringing the wall alive, then walking the full length—and back again—as you try to figure out how such a thing came to be...
Crossing over to the other side of the road, it's possible to get the full gist of what's happening on this crenelated wall; interspersed with metal panels, the composition of greenery reveals the geometry behind its design...
With its plethora of road signs, parked cars & a nearly non-stop flow of traffic, it wasn't easy to photograph this seventy-meter-long stretch of wall (which originally bound a convent, then a prison, and now a recently-transformed housing complex complemented by cultural/commercial activities). But these 'obstacles' did give me a chance to spend more time considering the garden from several vantage-points, and I also really enjoyed observing people's reactions to the unusual wall treatment.
I like the three-dimensional aspect, how the shadows (and some of the plants) extend below the rusty edges of the 'box' that contains the garden—not to mention the natural palette of rust that's formed in the few seasons since the vertical garden was a installed (seen in the quartet of images below). All in all, it's brought a rather inspiring, if fairly discrete, new landmark to keep an eye out for when in this part of Florence.
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It's worth pointing out that this recent addition to Florence's landscape alludes to one of the patterns from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language—No. 246: Climbing Plants. While the carefully conceived, orchestrated & maintained design means it only loosely follows the premise set out by the pattern—that "A building finally becomes a part of its surroundings when the plants grow over parts of it as freely as they grow along the ground"—this vertical garden certainly captures the spirit of the pattern by helping to smooth the transition between built form & nature. And it is undeniably more alive & intriguing than the continual conglomeration of posters that once covered this wall (fascinating though these fleeting records of city-wide events can be, in their many-layered stages of pasting/peeling).
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I'll close with a photo of my once-blue hydrangea, which has now turned mostly green. It reminds me of how many other photos of 'GREEN' didn't make it into May's series of ROY G BIV-inspired blog entries, but they may well be used for an idea that's slowly evolving from the imagery of the lovely vertical garden composition. It has truly piqued my imagination!
{Click here to learn about Patrick Blanc, the Parisian botanist whose work has led to a recent emergence of vertical gardens in urban spaces.}
{Click here to read about Le Murate, the ex-convent-turned jail-turned-housing complex bounded by the vertical garden (it's in Italian, but there are some photos & additional links).}
These are some of the Paperwhites photos I mentioned taking a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately there wasn't much sun in the studio during their brief stay—not until the blossoms had finally begun to shrivel, that is...but I even liked the faded paper-thin petals scattered along the piece of creamy Fabriano Ingres (shown in the last image).
I adore everything about Paperwhites...the masses of unpretentious little flowers, their whiteness, the perky stems, that insistent, somewhat spicy perfume. (I find that not everyone is drawn to the scent—including my daughter—but I think it's delightful.) When we used to live in the US, I would buy a few pots-worth of Paperwhite bulbs in December. Some time after the New Year arrived, when I was just beginning to get used to the emptiness left in the wake of the Christmas tree's disappearance, the bulbs would begin to sprout. Soon their stalks were shooting up so fast you could probably see them grow if you wanted to, and the flowers didn't keep you waiting for long.
I haven't experienced the joys of watching the scraggly bulbs come to life for several years, as I have never seen any here—not even the florist could tell me where to look for them...daffodil & hyacinth bulbs, yes, but no Paperwhites. She does have a supplier for cut Paperwhites, so that heady fragrance I associate with the month of January still fills the studio for a little while. It never seems long enough to study them as much as I would like, but I do have some photos from this year's bunch.
The two images fourth from the top (the sort of 'foggy' glimpses) show the Paperwhites reflected in my roasting pan. As I was getting ready to scrub it recently, I noticed how much character the combination of repeated heat, not-very-well-cleaned olive oil remnants (and heaven knows what else) had given it, so I took the pan into the studio to see what the camera thought. The dappled surface happened to catch the reflection of the paperwhites, reminding me of one of those speckled old mirrors found atop antique bureaus. So the pan ended up getting its own photo session too (I'll post a some of the images one of these days). I just love where things like washing the dishes can lead...
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As it turns out, I didn't have a chance to publish this entry yesterday, and had some time to look through the roasting pan photos on the train today as I was taking my daughter to the Milano airport to meet her father for what is known here as a settimana bianca ('white week', i.e. a ski holiday). It was an easy seven-hour round-trip
that got me home just in time for that lovely golden hour of the sunniest day
Florence has seen in a long while. Funny that, no matter how brief a
period I am away from Florence, it always makes me feel so happy to see the Cupola's shiny gold ball (the highest thing in the whole city) coming into view again...
My daughter was as enthusiastic about the photos as I was, but said she hopes that child services doesn't see them. (I do line the pan when I use it!) A couple of notes: the photo on the left of the second row shows another reflection of the Paperwhites, and the right-hand image in the bottom row is of a different pan, which has taken on an actual silvery patina in places.
As I photographed the pan(s), I was fascinated by the effects that occurred depending on what was positioned in the background—the mostly overcast sky, the ocher plaster of the building across from us, the terracotta rooftops—and how the pan was angled in relationship to the light. I applied auto-contrast to the images (then in some cases toned it down); this brought out the patina in an unexpected, almost surreal, way. One explanation for the metal's unusual coloration may be that, for lack of enough kitchen storage, these two pans make their permanent home in the oven and are therefore exposed to heat more often than is normal. In any case, they have provided me with quite a bit of amusement!
Below is a manipulated version of one of the shots...I really liked the palette that emerged when I played with the colors. (The original is shown below it.)
