(2) Spazio “Il giardino delle metamorfosi”
Anna Rota Martir and Francesca Caputo
[a few questions]
How did your story begin?
Anna / My story begins in a greenhouse, among fogged glass panes, scents of soil and leaves, where time flows to the rhythm of the seasons. I grew up among plants and flowers, in a family that has been cultivating life since 1906. Adolescence pushed me beyond those glass walls: I crossed European cities, practiced different languages, sounds and cultures, longing for the vastness and chaos of the cosmopolitan world. Today, with a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, the circle closes: roots and horizons, memory and experience, nature and culture come together. Art and creativity become a bridge, and design becomes a living place where these worlds interact, breathe, and transform those who pass through them.
Francesca / My story begins in Altamura, among pale stone, the wind of the Murgian territory, and a light that leaves nothing in shadow. Growing up in Puglia means living with a straightforward beauty, sometimes rough, but deeply authentic. From an early age I was curious, restless, and a dreamer: I wanted to understand how things work, to take them apart and put them back together. The Murgian landscape, with its apparent simplicity, taught me that even what seems barren holds invisible complexity. Designing became my way of transforming energy into space. At the same time, I have always felt the need to go beyond. I have worked in different regions of Italy, from Puglia to Trentino, confronting opposite landscapes and broadening my perspective. I also looked for abroad experiences, between Europe and America, to absorb languages, cultures, and different ways of inhabiting space. Every departure has been a return with greater awareness: deep roots, but an open gaze.
Who are the people who have most inspired you artistically and professionally?
Anna / My first thought naturally goes to my grandfather: it is thanks to his passion for greenery that I learned to love the hours spent working in the garden, under the sun and with sweat on my forehead. Thanks to him I learned the value of travelling, even when it feels like a leap into the void without a parachute, because every landscape holds a life lesson waiting to be discovered. Delving into technical aspects, I am deeply fascinated by the New Perennials movement. In particular, I follow the designer Sara Price, who in Bergamo in 2025 transformed sacred art paintings into moving landscapes, showing how architecture, history, and nature can enter into dialogue. My London friends Jess and Ally from Aesme Studio: when I collaborate with them, they guide me between the calm of the English countryside and the frenetic rhythm of London, where garden design and floral art intertwine with poetry and sensitivity. The studio This Humid House (Singapore) inspires me for its way of working with plant matter in an almost sculptural approach, respecting ecological and cultural characters and transforming greenery into a living language. On an artistic level, I am captivated by Gauguin’s colours, oriental textiles—especially Indian ones—and Etro’s Paisley, where pattern and colour become landscapes to be worn. Finally, the botanical painting of Margherita Leoni weaves together science and aesthetics, suggesting how to create spaces where functionality, vital mechanisms, and beauty breathe and interact in harmony.
Francesca / My inspirations do not belong to a single person or a single field: they move between space, music, and cinema, intertwining like lines of a single narrative. Classical studies gave me structure and a sense of measure; my theatrical experience in high school, though brief, taught me to perceive space as a living presence, a place of tension and transformation. I came to understand that every project is a silent stage where light, matter, and body enter into relation. In landscape design, I admire masters such as Piet Oudolf, for his ability to work with time and seasonal memory, and Gilles Clément, for his vision of the garden as an evolving organism and open system. I am also drawn to the sensitive and painterly approach of Dan Pearson, capable of creating landscapes that feel spontaneous yet are deeply intentional. Music has also shaped my gaze. I move from the instinctive energy of punk rock, raw and liberating, to the abrasive atmospheres of grunge, and then to the rarefied and contemplative depth of Japanese jazz. In cinema, I am guided by the suspended atmospheres of Hayao Miyazaki, where nature and spirit coexist without hierarchy, and by the visionary power of Paolo Sorrentino, capable of turning silence into contemporary epic.
How does nature inspire your projects and lifestyle?
Anna / To be completely honest, nature is my obsession. My garden is my refuge and my laboratory: my morning herbal tea is scented with freshly picked herbs, and the aromas of dinner tell the story of the seasons. As a florist, the flowers I grow become forms, colours, and small messages; in the gardens I design, each plant has a dialogue with the surrounding landscape, telling stories of wind, earth, and light. Even my free time has the same green thread: every journey, every holiday is an immersion into the hidden details of places, the colours of the soil, the scents of flowers, the light filtering through trees. Nature thus guides my life, transforming work, dream, and everyday reality into a single landscape in which everything vibrates and makes me feel alive.
Francesca / For me, nature has always been life. I grew up inside it, until I could almost feel its breath. Since I was a child, my father and I would get lost in the woods for hours, without hurry, following hidden paths, breathing in smells and silences, absorbing every vibration of the world around us. It was never a backdrop: I experienced it on my skin, with earth under my hands, wind on my face, light changing with every step, nature itself shifting with the seasons. There I learned to observe, to listen, to measure time with patience and wonder.
How do you imagine your “mental landscape” when you create? Are there any real or imagined places that guide you?
Anna / My mental landscape is born from the images that continuously materialize in my mind, wherever I go. It is not real or imaginary places that guide me; rather, it is an internal perception, a sixth sense that unites all the others and allows me to shape a concept that rarely changes. When I observe a place, I try to sense its genius loci, the unique character that defines it, and in that moment I become a kind of dowser: I weave together memory, perception, light, materials, and space, translating sensations into tangible forms. It is like listening to an invisible landscape, gathering vibrations and atmospheres and transforming them into a project that not only respects the place, but reveals its soul, making visible what would otherwise remain mere intuition.
Francesca / My mental landscape is crossed by currents: it is never static or purely contemplative. It is a field of forces where order and chaos coexist. I often see first the invisible structures of space: intersections, axes, centres, like guiding lines that orient everything else. Then I introduce tension, vibration, energy: a tree bent by the wind, a shaft of light filtering through the foliage. I care that a space has character, that it is not neutral. I want those who move through it to feel something in their body: lightness when the light dances along the path, intensity when the density of plants envelops, the surprise of an unexpected view. Every step, every corner, every detail contributes to an internal rhythm that modulates perception: the pace slows or accelerates, the gaze opens or concentrates, the mind allows itself to be surprised. When I design, I always ask myself: how will the body react? Where will the gaze come to rest? Where will the heart beat a little faster?
Is there a recurring dream – or idea – that keeps returning in your work?
Anna / Rather than a dream or a recurring idea, what inevitably emerges in my work is my personality. By nature, I am especially drawn to the human dimension of places: the stories they tell, the traces left by those who inhabit them, the relationships between space and body.
Francesca / The recurring dream in my work is the idea of crossing as growth, of passage as something that transforms those who undertake it. There are no rigid boundaries, but rather moments of suspension between what is known and what may happen: spaces that make one feel body, breath, and mind, that invite movement, response, and openness to surprise. I would like those who experience the work to live immersion from within. Every curve, every void, every element is designed so that the visitor does not remain an outsider, but becomes a knot, a breath, a heartbeat of the space itself. Perhaps this tension comes from me: deep roots that anchor, and a desire to move beyond that opens outward. Each project thus becomes a concrete invitation: enter, traverse, feel your body in dialogue with space, and when you leave, you are different, transformed by the experience lived, even if only for a moment.
If your way of designing were a dream, what kind of scenario would it be? Lucid, epic, silent, or collective?
Anna / If my way of designing were a dream, it would be like a film by Wes Anderson: theatrical, colourful, meticulous in detail, but also chaotic, filled with grotesque characters that animate the space and make it come alive. The setting is at once polished and surreal, where precise geometries coexist with eccentric inventions, and every colour and rhythm reflects my vision. It is not a collective dream, but a deeply personal one: a narrative in which light, form, and movement converge in unstable harmony. It is epic in structure, silent in detail, but never static, because it invites one to pause, observe, and be surprised.
Francesca / I imagine it as lucid and epic, but with a shared energy. Not a solitary dream, but a space that creates relationships, capable of welcoming and transforming. It is sunny without being superficial, intense yet harmonious. Like a musical composition that gradually unfolds: it begins with a subtle tension, expands, engages, and finally reaches a complete form without extinguishing its initial energy.
What does Avant gardening mean to you?
Anna / For me, “Avant gardening” means opening one’s eyes and finding oneself in a complex, layered world capable of breaking the patterns of everyday life. It means understanding that humanity’s activity upon nature, in order to domesticate and cultivate it, must benefit not only humans themselves but also the nature that hosts them. A garden is not only a place that is beautiful because it responds to universal aesthetic canons and is capable of moving us: it is also a living ecosystem in which design, care, and planting choices enhance biodiversity, provide ecosystem services, and sustain life. Thinking in terms of avant gardening means building spaces that are beautiful and poetic today, but also carry the responsibility of remaining alive and flourishing in the future, where every plant, every gesture, and every design contributes to a balance between aesthetics, ecology, and the well-being of living beings.
Francesca / For me, Avant gardening is above all responsibility and vision. Ecological responsibility: designing spaces that respect the soil, natural cycles, seasons, and biodiversity, creating gardens capable of lasting over time and sustaining life in all its forms. Every planting choice, every act of care, becomes an act of balance between humans and nature. Cultural vision: the garden is no longer just ornament or decoration, but becomes a narrative, educational, transformative space. It tells stories, evokes emotions, and invites one to pause and reflect.
At Orticolario 2026.
What emotion or feeling you hope people experience when they encounter your project?
Anna / At Orticolario 2026, I hope that those who enter our project will be enveloped by free, delicate, and authentic emotions, without predetermined boundaries. I would like each person to feel what their own heart suggests: wonder, awe, sweetness, or melancholy. I want every step to become a discovery, every gaze a dialogue with the landscape, and for nature, colours, and forms of the garden to become voice, whisper, and caress, creating a sensory and emotional experience that remains alive in memory long after leaving the garden.
Francesca / At Orticolario 2026, I hope that those who enter our project will first experience a slight tension, a subtle sense of disorientation, as when one finds oneself in a space that does not reveal itself immediately, inviting careful and curious movement. Then, step by step, I would like a path to unfold that alternates wonder and contemplation. From primordial darkness to reconciled light, each threshold crossed becomes a passage between different states: from silence to rhythm, from shadow to light, from observing to becoming part of the space itself. The visitor is not a spectator but an active element: their body, breath, and steps are in dialogue with the garden, transforming space into a shared experience. Every detail is designed to surprise, to stimulate curiosity, to invite movement, response, and surrender. At the end of the journey, I would like one to emerge with a feeling of quiet strength and wonder, sensing that they have not simply crossed a garden, but a dream—a transformative experience that remains in the body, under the skin.
If your project were music, what would it be?
Anna / Questo corpo – La rappresentante di Lista.
Francesca / Brazil – Venerus.
Five words that, for you, are closely linked to the concepts of dream and illusion.
Metamorphosis, freedom, imagination, kaleidoscope, vision.
[BIO]
Anna Rota Martir was born in Bergamo on 25 June 2000 and grew up in a greenhouse.
She loves the primordial silence of nature and the chaotic breath of the city. Through an aesthetic ethic, she seeks the union of opposites: order and chaos, roots and metropolis. Her guiding belief is that creativity requires courage.
[BIO]
Francesca Caputo was born in Altamura on 26 October 2001 among the Murge hills, and is a blend of Mediterranean energy and design sensibility. Curious, enterprising, and sunny in disposition, she explores the landscape as a living and transformative space. In her work, rhythm and structure, instinct and vision coexist, with a perspective that weaves together nature, music, and culture.
“To be completely honest, nature is my obsession. My garden is my refuge and my laboratory: my morning herbal tea is scented with freshly picked herbs, and the aromas of dinner tell the story of the seasons.T” – Anna
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“My mental landscape is crossed by currents: it is never static or purely contemplative. It is a field of forces where order and chaos coexist. I often see first the invisible structures of space: intersections, axes, centres, like guiding lines that orient everything else. Then I introduce tension, vibration, energy: a tree bent by the wind, a shaft of light filtering through the foliage.” – Francesca