DOTE Garden is a physical space in the city of Palermo, conceived and cared for by the collective Aterraterra. It is born out of Listening to Seeds, the third moment in our Year of Listening. You can visit the garden by reading the stories of the seeds that have been planted in it. This is one of the stories.
I brought two different seeds.
The first set of seeds I brought have been waiting to be planted for years. I don’t know which plant they are. They were given to me as a gift at the wedding of two of my best friends. They were so lovely together, but now they have separated. I want to plant their seeds, who knows….
The other seeds I’ve brought relate to my origin. In poland we call their flowers Nasturtium. They come from the mountains in the south of Poland where they grew in the house of my grandma and my mother gave them to me when I left Poland, as a way to carry a piece of home with me.
They are edible flowers, the shape of the seeds is very special, like small brains.
They never really grew so well where my mother planted them, there are these climbing plants that ate their leaves which made the flowers die. It is always a drama: we are always very happy when they grew and sad when they were finished. But the funny thing is that when I arrived here to Palermo, a warm place by the sea side very different from the cold mountains where I come from, I encountered lots of Nasturzia. At one corner in the city there is almost a forest of them. They grow in abundance and they are wild; no one plants them. They are like a dream of my mother, which will never happen in Poland.
Click here to read/see the different stories…
Photo by: Ségolène Bulot
