Climate change and conflicts have determined a new approach to the environment, which in turn calls for a new perspective in landscape design, keeping abreast with our day and age: lines, paths, volumes, functions and gardeners are no longer enough to turn a place into a garden. Gardens have always required planning, although they need not be educational but  leave room to our imagination. As certainty of formal spaces is wavering, a change of style is blossoming no longer fearing to identify key values in small things. In the new gardens the wonderment of doing and making is not juxtaposed to leisure as it feeds on our greater awareness and respect for the environment, preferring slow time as the time of Nature.

Plants are the matter and the subject of all gardens in as much as they represent harmony and beauty: left unto themselves they initially require time find this balance, they change the shapes and sizes in a garden, they even need opposing forces to be controlled. Yet, a well designed project will enable plants to reach maturity, synchronizing with our expectations, completing the garden with virtuous variations able to fulfill even the most ambitious dreams.

We are aware of a biological network that draws energy from biodiversity: it means the boundaries between personal and collective spheres dissolve giving way to a more encompassing notion of  Nature, an idea we are attracted to and which helps us recognize landscapes as a common good.

As we have changed, so have our ideas of Nature: garden designing will have to seek new forms based on a evolved concept of wilderness culture. New apparently chaotic gardens spring up, as an artistic expression to fulfill dreams, as a natural choice to create the most beautiful of gardens, where both the biological forces and the creative intuitions of the design blend into a balance. Nature lovers know that chaos is a transient state that does not pertain to us, but garden lovers know that nature accepts no imposition, unless care and constant presence are offered. 

We are addressing designers from all walks of life who have good knowledge of Nature, artistic skills and humbleness, to identify style strategies and practices able to lightly balance order and disorder, to indulge Nature without domesticating it.

 Read more about this competition and the requirements here.

Antonio Perazzi, artistic director of the  Radicepura Garden Festival.