**Coming soon online: the full program**

For now, a preview_

[talks]

Un mondo (verde) oltre l’immaginazione / A (green) world beyond imagination

with Alessandra Viola, writer and science communicator

Plants, often considered passive life forms, hold extraordinary abilities: they cooperate, adapt, perceive stimuli, and develop sophisticated strategies for defence and survival, demonstrating a biological intelligence that continues to surprise us today. But there’s more: the plant world displays forms, sizes, and colours so remarkable that they seem to belong to another dimension. An alien universe in which nature constantly exceeds imagination.

Le voci degli alberi non lo lasciavano dormire / The voices of the trees would not let him sleep

with Christophe Ségas, writer, Tiziano Fratus, tree-writer, poet and photographer, and Laura Putti, publisher

The theme is highly contemporary. It is no longer unusual, while walking in a forest, to meet people embracing trees. What are they doing? Are they speaking to them? Do trees have a voice? In the case of Olivier Georges Gaillard, a lumberjack and poet protagonist of Christophe Ségas’s novel, the pines speak through him—destroying him. Nightmare, delirium, and abyss become part of his journey. He must flee as far as Patagonia to be possessed by the more reassuring voice of beech trees.

From the imagined forests of Christophe Ségas to those actually explored by Tiziano Fratus, dialogue with trees remains central to the relationship between humans and nature. Fratus has listened to the voice of sequoias and translated it into many of his books. A meeting point between literature, spirituality, and ecology.

[performance]

Il bosco dei sogni / The forest of dreams

with PaT – Passi Teatrali, theatre company

Entering a forest and getting lost.
Getting lost in nature.
In a nature that is both familiar and unfamiliar—amplified, distorted, magical.

In this suspended space, stories come to life that exist halfway between dream and wakefulness, reality and illusion, truth and imagination. Human figures and mysterious creatures meet and brush past one another, carrying desires, fears, loves, and secrets.

In the forest, every answer seems possible and every certainty dissolves. One is lost, yes—but it is precisely in this disorientation that everything takes on new meaning.

Carmen-somnii
with Liliana Sommariva, musician

As in a collective dream, sound transcends reality and goes beyond it. Plants are no longer mere botanical presences, but living, conscious beings. Real and surreal merge, and music opens a passage toward what does not yet exist.

Soundscapes become part of the shared experience of Orticolario. What remains is an oneiric aftertaste—like a faded memory that continues to resonate even beyond the boundaries of Villa Erba.

[workshop]

Sogni appesi / Suspendend dreams 

workshop for creating a botanical dreamcatcher

with Marzia Gullino, craftswoman

Traditionally associated with protecting sleep and desires, dreamcatchers are a small portal to the oneiric world—a suspended web capable of holding the most beautiful dreams and letting go of what weighs us down.

Dried flowers—with their light, timeless forms—make each creation unique, poetic, and personal.

L’arte del rituale / The art of ritual 
workshop for creating a ceramic incense holder or smudge holder
with Le Terre della Torre, artisan ceramics workshop

Leaves, flowers, and clay.
Plant textures leave their imprint on the material surface, shaping incense and smudge holders inspired by ritual practices of purification and meditation. Each piece can be enriched using a selection of water-based pigments.

Colour enhances the veins and hidden secrets of the pressed leaves, giving life to original creations capable of welcoming every moment of stillness.